5: ballet

October 9, 2009 at 3:12 am | In My Time | Leave a Comment

It had been a few months since I last set foot in the 6:30 Thursday class.

The little clock on the edge of my computer screen blinked 6:15 when I decided to go.

I ran out, pulled up my leotard in the bathroom and sprinted to the subway. The stupid train got stuck for 10 more minutes. By the time I arrived, I was breathless and mad, but the teacher wasn’t there yet. I took that as a sign.

***

Ballet felt good. Good to stretch again, good to feel graceful — but only when I wasn’t trying to catch up or look like my neighbor. “Do your own thing; don’t look at others,” Martha would say. You try being a newb.

“Have you been dancing this whole time?” Martha asked after the barre exercises. (She likes to single people out in class.) I shook my head and continued my stretch. “That’s good; it all stayed in your head then,” she said. I smiled. Toward the end of the hour and a half, I couldn’t follow anymore. There were four steps, and I could only remember two at a time. When rows of feet swept neatly across the floor, I stumbled. I couldn’t finish. I walked the rest of the way.

Afterward, I walked out and felt unhappy. I wanted more. More time, better skills, more out of life. But the thoughts were grounded in a bed of logic. Why worry, I thought. Why waste your time wondering why you hadn’t continued … why feel terrible that you ruined your feet when they’re still usable enough to attend these beginner classes?

I practiced the steps on the subway platform. It’s OK if you can’t remember. Talent isn’t talent … it’s not a mystery. It’s patience and dedication.

***

When I started art school, I wasn’t an artist. I was a teenager. I doodled small pictures in the middle of the page and felt sorry I’d made the wrong decision. It made me nervous. The kids around me were confident. They had Mona Lisas in their newsprints. And then I stayed up nights, spent weekends cooped up in the narrow dorm room scratching pencils and plants and the view or my reflection into my notepad. By the end of the semester, my final project was one of the top three drawings in the class. That felt good.

So it is with any kind of creative pursuit: It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to practice a million times. Literally. So after tonight, I’m a step closer to greatness. I only have 999,000 hours left. It’s a lot, yes, but I’d rather be here than where I was the day before.

4: cleft thoughts

October 8, 2009 at 3:08 am | In My Time, Uncategorized | 3 Comments
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I was sitting on the L at 14th, waiting for the train to start on its destination. I looked to my right: an old man reading the paper. To my left: empty seats, and further down a baby in a stroller facing his mother.

His mom’s head bobbed as she dozed off. Soon he kicked, and her head came up straight again. When he cooed I wanted to hug him. When he turned and smiled at me, I saw his cleft lip. He was still adorable, and when he showed all his teeth, he reminded me of my favorite junk food of my youth: ring-shaped cheesy poofs with four little protrusions at the front. Picture 1They tasted really good.

I wondered whether his gums got cold when the wind blew. I thought of him in his smile, oblivious, and wondered at what point the feelings of hopelessness and self-loathing would afflict him. A curse, he’ll call it then, as he will read it in his mother’s eyes.

But does God really give us curses? A curse yes, because it makes life difficult, and it makes you wonder why He’d get the idea of doing that. But is it also an opportunity? A key to gaining greater depth of character, greater compassion, greater understanding…a stepping stone, a tool itself that will enable this kid to understand and help others? Most spoiled, beautiful children don’t get that chance, the poor things.

The train still sighed and sputtered. In the bright white light, the baby cooed and smiled at me again.

Does God hand out curses? I thought again then. We both waited.

Love

December 10, 2008 at 5:48 am | In Dating, My Time | 1 Comment
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On Sunday, I walked to my best friend’s house, and then I ran to get there faster. I had something to say, something beautiful, a feeling and a thought that had bubbled inside me as naturally as the train carried me on its tracks, just a few minutes earlier. “I love New York.”

It feels good to be in love with home. Healthy, heartwarming love.

***

Monday, an old crush asked me out. I said OK, gave him my card and walked back into the office. It’s been since January; I almost made it to a year. “That’s a good streak to break!” said Maddy at my news. “He’s cute, and getting a drink with someone never hurt anybody.”

So you think, I thought, as I nodded in agreement.

***

Today, I left work late, earlier than yesterday. “You especially deserve it,” bossman said. “Go rest. See you tomorrow.” Tomorrow, for more overtime.

I didn’t go home after I walked out of the building. I turned the corner instead, walked to the bookstore, where I descended the twisting stairs, navigated around rows of shelves and reached for the familiar book. I deposited myself on a half-hidden chair and continued where I had left off at lunch the day before.

I read about survivors. Strong, brilliant girls. Girls who sang silently, counted numbers, painted mental pictures, identified themselves as queens and fairies and angels like the ones staring down at them from the yellow bedroom wallpaper. Girls who checked out momentarily to ensure they’d still be there tomorrow.

It’s amazing, the intuitive resilience of the human spirit. Especially the feminine kind.

Neighborhood Groceries

December 3, 2008 at 3:55 am | In My Time, Pets | 2 Comments
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Today’s grocery list was rather short and healthy:

  • 1/2 pound of Bulgarian feta
  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 2 red pears
  • 3 red apples
  • 4 organic bananas

All for the price of $10.48. Going 48 cents over the ten-dollar bill I offered myself as I walked in the store was well worth it. I didn’t even notice that the quantity of what I got increased precisely by one (if you don’t count the feta), and that for some reason, 60 percent of my groceries were red.

The color of my local supermarket.

Am I on crack? You’d think so. But I notice these things at times in a very comfortable, cozy-in-the-back-of-my-essence way. I am an observant copy editor, and I love my neighborhood. On my way home, I twisted the handle of my plastic bag and thought about the reasons: the warm buzz in the supermarket, the familiarity of its aisles, the comfort of knowing the little streets that make a 90-degree angle to lead from subway to store to home.

The series of entities as I greet them when I walk out of the subway towards home: First the guys that, no matter how cold outside, stand at the bottom of the subway stairs and hand you gym membership cards, then the Brazilian buffet with the crazy Friday night ethnic karaoke parties, the newspaper stand with the sleazy Indian guy, the eyebrow-threading place, the digital image store, the T-mobile store, the three sisters’ nail salon, the random ophthalmologist. The street (cross it),  the big (in New York standards) parking lot, the supermarket, the friendly falafel guys outside it whipping up award-winning delicacies and bubbling my name out in their exuberant greeting as I pass. The intoxicating smell of the Christmas trees lying on the pavement these days, waiting to be ushered into homes. The more homely smells as I turn the corner to walk along my own street: flower shop, bread, laundry, homemade cuisines.

A sharp, sugary smell hit me when I walked into my buliding tonight. I stopped to check my mail, and I could hear the illegal Mexican families of the first-floor apartment laughing, bonding over dessert. I fiddled with the envelopes stuffed into the little box and smiled as I recognized the distinct crimson of the Netflix envelope. My own private joy.

My other joys of weekday evenings are walking up the stairs to my apartment. I arrive at around 7 if I get out of work on time, or later if I’m sipping on Stellas somewhere across town or meeting friends for movies. If I go grocery shopping, then 7:30 is right about the time I open my front door, and then I pet my cat Freddy, plop down on the couch and join him for dinner.

Ibanez

December 2, 2008 at 4:59 am | In Music, My Time | 1 Comment
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After Thanksgiving dinner, I washed the dishes and he, belly full, plopped on the couch. The sudden movement of the air in the room pushed my guitar — which was leaning ever so slightly on the wall — and gracefully knocked it face down on the floor.

“I broke it!” I heard him cry. I didn’t turn around. Kept washing the dishes.

I could hear him trying to fix it. How can you fix a broken guitar without epoxy?

He fiddled with the strings and the wood, wishing to turn the moment around. He was upset. But what’s done is done. It’s over. In my head, it was dead long ago, even before I sent it to the guitar store to fix the first time.

Today, I sat on the stool, like an acrobat, balancing my own weight against the glossy Fender. “It’s nice,” I said and looked at him. But my gaze faltered as my elbow slipped off abruptly, and when I changed chords, the guitar neck tilted. My fingers pressed strings faster to hold on to the instrument, and they hit the wrong notes. “Well, at least I have an excuse for playing bad,” I thought to myself.

The light in the store was yellow, unyielding, and the notes in the air made me want to run.

I tried a child’s guitar. A three-quarter sized Yamaha, a half-sized Taylor later. It was nice, but it felt like a cop-out. Too easy. I would learn too soon, and then I would feel handicapped. I’d never be a rock star.

Finally, I grabbed a longish guitar off the wall. It was hanging up high and it was out of my price range, I figured, since the tag was blank. In fact, it was all wrong: The neck was too wide for my fingers, the strings were nylon, tied in complicated knots at the bottom. And then I played. The sound wasn’t gorgeous like the Fender’s, but it was sweeter. And the neck was shorter than the Fender’s: It only seemed long because the body was narrower — a perfect fit for my short elbows.

It was love, at third sight. Almost as cheap as the Fender.

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