Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
father's day
I was riding the D-train home yesterday with a friend of a friend after a lovely picnic in Sunset Park (banh mi and fresh strawberries and blueberry buckle and Vietnamese iced coffee), and this friend of a friend will be moving to Berlin in another few weeks. We were talking about living in Europe, and our experiences of Germany in particular, and it got me to remembering something I wrote ten years ago. Ten years later things feel less raw, less exposed somehow, and I'm glad to be where I am now, here on the verge of another collision of my birthday and Father's Day.
Spring 1999
My father was the kind of person with whom other people felt an immediate and lasting connection. He was the kind of person that people remembered later as being brilliant and funny and quirky and so human. He was quick to anger but, as so many people have told me over the years, his anger and sometimes overly-harsh criticisms were rooted in a deep passion and caring for others, for life.
My father liked to travel, he liked history, but that wasn't enough. He wanted to live in the places he read about in books, he wanted to live what others lived. He was a professor of history but I think for him academia wasn't enough: it fell flat, rang hollow. He was no historian living in that intellectual ivory tower; he was hungry -- insatiably hungry -- for experience. When he was writing his dissertation on the economic history of the Weimar Republic back in 1978 he dragged us off to Germany for a year, first to a farm in Ippendorf and then to the urban metropolis that was Bonn. Eleven years later, when he was just beginning the research for a book on the origins of the Great War, that ironically-named 'war to end all wars,' he dragged us off to Paris for a year. And everywhere that he went he left new friends behind who inevitably found their way to our door in California, or to the lake cabin in Idaho, or to our apartment in Paris or our home in Mohegan Lake. Everywhere we lived we seemed to have a steady stream of visitors, and he loved them all, and so we loved them all too, and though he's gone now we still get cards from some of them at Christmas time.
My father was an associate professor of European history at Barnard College, the women's college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. He liked studying history but he preferred to live it. I think the most amazing time in his life, as a specifically German historian, was the winter we were living in Paris, and that Christmas we spent in Berlin, that winter of 1989/90, the winter that Wall came a-tumblin' down. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War -- the opening of the Brandenburg Gate, the revolution in Romania, the thousands and thousands waiting to cross through Checkpoint Charlie and the newly-opened border, the chipping away of the Wall, of history itself. And he watched it all, drinking it in, grinning wildly, perhaps satiated.
My father, I know, has taken on near mythic proportions in my head. Larger than life, beautified (yes, almost beatified) sometimes beyond any recognition -- he was an amazing man and I am an idolizing daughter. I forget the times we fought, the times I screamed at him that I wished he wasn't my father, that I wasn't his daughter, that I hated him. It's easier, sometimes, to forget, to think that I was always good to him, but I am lying to myself. I know that. My father was a smart man, though, and I know that despite our fights he surely knew that I always loved him, surely understood that I wouldn't have bothered yelling at him, otherwise.
This is supposed to be about him, though, not me. In non-mythical measurements he was about 6 feet tall (maybe a little less), weighed about 180 pounds (maybe a little bit more). He had blondish hair that tended towards shagginess, frothing around his head in wild wisps and curls. When I was little he had a reddish orangeish mustache and beard. Years later he started to let them grow again but grew discouraged when he discovered they were coming in more gray than red and orange. He wore a suit to work most days but always looked a little uncomfortable, preferring instead his soft faded jeans and worn flannel shirts. He liked to brag that some of his advisees had blue hair and that he was friends with the mohawked security guard. He never smoked but he would hang out with the "smokers' brigade" in front of the Barnard library. He liked to tell us funny stories about his college kids at the dinner table sometimes. He had one advisee, a Columbia boy, who had earned his college money by riding new roller coasters all over the country, breaking time records. Once, when he took me to work with him one day, this particular student came into his office hours. After the student left I asked if he was the roller coaster boy. Dad, surprised, said, "Yes, how'd you know?" to which I allegedly replied, "He looked a little scrambled." I must have been eight or nine at the time. Dad took to bragging about this story for awhile.
My father died on April 18th, 1993, a week and a half before his 47th birthday, a beautiful Sunday afternoon a week after Easter. I was two months short of 17, a typical pseudo-angst-ridden suburban teenager, and suddenly I was handed on a silver platter a justification, a reason and an explanation, for my moodiness and dark clothes. Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck, like I'm still that pseudo-angst-ridden suburban teenager, even nearly six years later, even after four years in the middle of Manhattan. Sometimes, at 4 a.m., I am still that 16-year-old daughter watching from the sidelines as the mythical father's eyes roll back into his head.
I'm trying, these days, to take my father down from that pedestal, to de-mythologize him. If I can do that, if I can make him a normal person again, maybe I can be a normal person too. But this was supposed to be about him, about the mythical father, not me.
"papa went to other lands
and he found someone who understands
the ticking, and the western man's need to cry
he came back the other day, yeah, you know
some things in life may change
and some things
they stay the same
like time, there's always time
on my mind
so pass me by, i'll be fine
just give me time..."
(Damien Rice, Older Chests)
Spring 1999
My father was the kind of person with whom other people felt an immediate and lasting connection. He was the kind of person that people remembered later as being brilliant and funny and quirky and so human. He was quick to anger but, as so many people have told me over the years, his anger and sometimes overly-harsh criticisms were rooted in a deep passion and caring for others, for life.
My father liked to travel, he liked history, but that wasn't enough. He wanted to live in the places he read about in books, he wanted to live what others lived. He was a professor of history but I think for him academia wasn't enough: it fell flat, rang hollow. He was no historian living in that intellectual ivory tower; he was hungry -- insatiably hungry -- for experience. When he was writing his dissertation on the economic history of the Weimar Republic back in 1978 he dragged us off to Germany for a year, first to a farm in Ippendorf and then to the urban metropolis that was Bonn. Eleven years later, when he was just beginning the research for a book on the origins of the Great War, that ironically-named 'war to end all wars,' he dragged us off to Paris for a year. And everywhere that he went he left new friends behind who inevitably found their way to our door in California, or to the lake cabin in Idaho, or to our apartment in Paris or our home in Mohegan Lake. Everywhere we lived we seemed to have a steady stream of visitors, and he loved them all, and so we loved them all too, and though he's gone now we still get cards from some of them at Christmas time.
My father was an associate professor of European history at Barnard College, the women's college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. He liked studying history but he preferred to live it. I think the most amazing time in his life, as a specifically German historian, was the winter we were living in Paris, and that Christmas we spent in Berlin, that winter of 1989/90, the winter that Wall came a-tumblin' down. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War -- the opening of the Brandenburg Gate, the revolution in Romania, the thousands and thousands waiting to cross through Checkpoint Charlie and the newly-opened border, the chipping away of the Wall, of history itself. And he watched it all, drinking it in, grinning wildly, perhaps satiated.
My father, I know, has taken on near mythic proportions in my head. Larger than life, beautified (yes, almost beatified) sometimes beyond any recognition -- he was an amazing man and I am an idolizing daughter. I forget the times we fought, the times I screamed at him that I wished he wasn't my father, that I wasn't his daughter, that I hated him. It's easier, sometimes, to forget, to think that I was always good to him, but I am lying to myself. I know that. My father was a smart man, though, and I know that despite our fights he surely knew that I always loved him, surely understood that I wouldn't have bothered yelling at him, otherwise.
This is supposed to be about him, though, not me. In non-mythical measurements he was about 6 feet tall (maybe a little less), weighed about 180 pounds (maybe a little bit more). He had blondish hair that tended towards shagginess, frothing around his head in wild wisps and curls. When I was little he had a reddish orangeish mustache and beard. Years later he started to let them grow again but grew discouraged when he discovered they were coming in more gray than red and orange. He wore a suit to work most days but always looked a little uncomfortable, preferring instead his soft faded jeans and worn flannel shirts. He liked to brag that some of his advisees had blue hair and that he was friends with the mohawked security guard. He never smoked but he would hang out with the "smokers' brigade" in front of the Barnard library. He liked to tell us funny stories about his college kids at the dinner table sometimes. He had one advisee, a Columbia boy, who had earned his college money by riding new roller coasters all over the country, breaking time records. Once, when he took me to work with him one day, this particular student came into his office hours. After the student left I asked if he was the roller coaster boy. Dad, surprised, said, "Yes, how'd you know?" to which I allegedly replied, "He looked a little scrambled." I must have been eight or nine at the time. Dad took to bragging about this story for awhile.
My father died on April 18th, 1993, a week and a half before his 47th birthday, a beautiful Sunday afternoon a week after Easter. I was two months short of 17, a typical pseudo-angst-ridden suburban teenager, and suddenly I was handed on a silver platter a justification, a reason and an explanation, for my moodiness and dark clothes. Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck, like I'm still that pseudo-angst-ridden suburban teenager, even nearly six years later, even after four years in the middle of Manhattan. Sometimes, at 4 a.m., I am still that 16-year-old daughter watching from the sidelines as the mythical father's eyes roll back into his head.
I'm trying, these days, to take my father down from that pedestal, to de-mythologize him. If I can do that, if I can make him a normal person again, maybe I can be a normal person too. But this was supposed to be about him, about the mythical father, not me.
"papa went to other lands
and he found someone who understands
the ticking, and the western man's need to cry
he came back the other day, yeah, you know
some things in life may change
and some things
they stay the same
like time, there's always time
on my mind
so pass me by, i'll be fine
just give me time..."
(Damien Rice, Older Chests)
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
chairs in Times Square & other local and not so local goings on
Apparently brightly colored plastic folding lawn chairs are taking over Times Square. I kid you not. I have yet to see this in person, but might have to take a wander down there just to check it out for myself. Nate and I would make fortresses out of such chairs when we were kids, out in the back yard. But we only had two of them. Imagine what we could do with the 376 chairs that are inhabiting midtown...
Also apparently the Democrats don't control the New York State Senate even when they control the New York State Senate. We should have known it was too good to last, I suppose, but still, Empire State politics continues to astound and confound me.
I found this piece on Supreme Court Justices, and how grumpy, belligerent, dismissive justices often make the best justices, oddly charming.
Also from today's Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg's lovely little take on the language, or lack of language, with which the land talks to him. I really like Klinkenborg.
Further afield, something known as 'orbital chaos' might send Venus and Earth crashing into each other, but not for another 3.5 billion years, give or take.
Also apparently the Democrats don't control the New York State Senate even when they control the New York State Senate. We should have known it was too good to last, I suppose, but still, Empire State politics continues to astound and confound me.
I found this piece on Supreme Court Justices, and how grumpy, belligerent, dismissive justices often make the best justices, oddly charming.
Also from today's Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg's lovely little take on the language, or lack of language, with which the land talks to him. I really like Klinkenborg.
Further afield, something known as 'orbital chaos' might send Venus and Earth crashing into each other, but not for another 3.5 billion years, give or take.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Saturday, June 06, 2009
coffee
I'm sitting in my office, here in this basement library, on what is turning out to be a beautiful spring day after days of gray skies and rain. The ceiling was leaking when I got here this morning (as it often does after a night of rain) so I spent the first half hour mopping up the floor and strategically placing empty plastic recycling pails.
I'm sitting here in my office on a gorgeous spring day, feeling a little bit washed out under florescent lights in this windowless, airless space, but I am also smiling and thinking about coffee.
A particular coffee, actually, and an hour or so shared with an old friend after work yesterday. She came to meet me at the library at closing time, and it was raining and windy. We walked down Broadway looking for a quiet place to hole up for a bit, ended up at Absolute bagels, wind-blown and damp and cold.
Our conversation was warm, though -- underwritten by a mutual affection that I had almost forgotten was there, had ever been there. This was Elizabeth, you see; Crazy E, as I sometimes, and horribly, referred to her in the heyday of our living together nine years ago.
We spent a year together, which somehow seemed like a good idea at the time (I was couch-hopping after an aborted attempt at living in Queens -- long story; she was having roommate issues and wanting to move out), but which, in retrospect, was clearly not such a great idea. We had an odd friendship, an intensely emotional and needy and demanding friendship; a friendship that did well, I think, to have a little space built into it. That space disappeared completely, of course, when we moved into our little two-bedroom apartment. We got two cats from the ASPCA. We set up house. We bonded. We fought. Slammed doors. Reconciled. Cried. Stayed up till the wee hours drinking and talking and partaking in certain illicit substances. Drove each other mad. Parted ways, each taking a cat with us (me just fifteen blocks further north, her back to the west coast). Didn't speak for years, first out of anger, then just out of time passing, friendships gone, locations unknown.
She moved back to New York City a year or two ago and we got back in touch, met for dinner once or twice, though the last time we saw each other was a month or two before the election last November, so it'd been awhile. She came to meet me yesterday after work and we walked down Broadway in the rain and ended up sharing an hour over tea and coffee in a little bagel shop and I remembered, then, some of what I had adored about her so much before our year of living together came crashing to an end.
It felt good, during that hour, to experience her laughter again, and her intensity; a quickness caught up in hand gestures and also a propensity for slowly mulling things over before fully giving voice to what's going on behind those sparkling eyes of hers.
We stopped in at West Side Market so she could pick up something for her dinner, then went each our separate ways to the subway. There was this moment as we said goodbye, though, when I reached in to hug her and the hug felt real, felt genuine and natural and warm, and this made me smile as I waited for the train.
I was talking with Alan later in the evening about friendships, and he said that he sees people as planets flying through space, sometimes coming in closer to each other, sometimes flying apart at speeds we can only understand in the abstract. I said I've been realizing lately that friendships wax and wane, but that sometimes, when we're lucky, maybe after we stop needing them quite so badly, maybe after we stop missing them quite so much, people can eventually come back to us.
Eventually we realized we were kind of pretty much saying the same thing, and we laughed, and I was happy to think that Alan's been around all these years, not flying off into space. This, too, made me laugh, and I went off to bed thinking about these two very different friendships, these two extraordinarily different people, that I am lucky enough to have in my life.
I woke up this morning and came to work thinking about coffee and warmth and rain, on this beautiful spring day, and found myself smiling still.
I'm sitting here in my office on a gorgeous spring day, feeling a little bit washed out under florescent lights in this windowless, airless space, but I am also smiling and thinking about coffee.
A particular coffee, actually, and an hour or so shared with an old friend after work yesterday. She came to meet me at the library at closing time, and it was raining and windy. We walked down Broadway looking for a quiet place to hole up for a bit, ended up at Absolute bagels, wind-blown and damp and cold.
Our conversation was warm, though -- underwritten by a mutual affection that I had almost forgotten was there, had ever been there. This was Elizabeth, you see; Crazy E, as I sometimes, and horribly, referred to her in the heyday of our living together nine years ago.
We spent a year together, which somehow seemed like a good idea at the time (I was couch-hopping after an aborted attempt at living in Queens -- long story; she was having roommate issues and wanting to move out), but which, in retrospect, was clearly not such a great idea. We had an odd friendship, an intensely emotional and needy and demanding friendship; a friendship that did well, I think, to have a little space built into it. That space disappeared completely, of course, when we moved into our little two-bedroom apartment. We got two cats from the ASPCA. We set up house. We bonded. We fought. Slammed doors. Reconciled. Cried. Stayed up till the wee hours drinking and talking and partaking in certain illicit substances. Drove each other mad. Parted ways, each taking a cat with us (me just fifteen blocks further north, her back to the west coast). Didn't speak for years, first out of anger, then just out of time passing, friendships gone, locations unknown.
She moved back to New York City a year or two ago and we got back in touch, met for dinner once or twice, though the last time we saw each other was a month or two before the election last November, so it'd been awhile. She came to meet me yesterday after work and we walked down Broadway in the rain and ended up sharing an hour over tea and coffee in a little bagel shop and I remembered, then, some of what I had adored about her so much before our year of living together came crashing to an end.
It felt good, during that hour, to experience her laughter again, and her intensity; a quickness caught up in hand gestures and also a propensity for slowly mulling things over before fully giving voice to what's going on behind those sparkling eyes of hers.
We stopped in at West Side Market so she could pick up something for her dinner, then went each our separate ways to the subway. There was this moment as we said goodbye, though, when I reached in to hug her and the hug felt real, felt genuine and natural and warm, and this made me smile as I waited for the train.
I was talking with Alan later in the evening about friendships, and he said that he sees people as planets flying through space, sometimes coming in closer to each other, sometimes flying apart at speeds we can only understand in the abstract. I said I've been realizing lately that friendships wax and wane, but that sometimes, when we're lucky, maybe after we stop needing them quite so badly, maybe after we stop missing them quite so much, people can eventually come back to us.
Eventually we realized we were kind of pretty much saying the same thing, and we laughed, and I was happy to think that Alan's been around all these years, not flying off into space. This, too, made me laugh, and I went off to bed thinking about these two very different friendships, these two extraordinarily different people, that I am lucky enough to have in my life.
I woke up this morning and came to work thinking about coffee and warmth and rain, on this beautiful spring day, and found myself smiling still.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
'i done been through the pain and the sorrow, the struggle is nothing but love (nothing but love)..."
Maino feat. T-Pain, All The Above
(Thanks, Lauren!)
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Saletan on Tiller
"The people who do late-term abortions are the ones who don't flinch. They're like the veterans you sometimes see in war documentaries, quietly recounting what they faced and did. You think you're pro-choice. You think marching or phone-banking makes you an activist. You know nothing. There's you, and then there are the people who work in the clinics. And then there are the people who use the forceps. And then there are the people who use the forceps nobody else will use. At the end of the line, there's George Tiller."
(William Saletan, Slate Magazine, 6.1.09)
(William Saletan, Slate Magazine, 6.1.09)
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