A Strange Day on Planet Earth

There were just a few strands tangled with the grass and burdock when I cleared the yard.  A few delicate strands, I thought, couldn’t hurt.

I left them to grow, tying some kitchen string to direct their path.  What I didn’t know about morning glories: They laugh at assistance.

The vines strangled the string, racing to its tip and then creeping back over themselves in endless spirals.  One hot June night I went to sleep and in the morning discovered one young tendril had grown several inches overnight.

I slept again, and dreamt morning glories had grown up to the sky, as I stood in an apron battling the tendrils with a pair of kitchen scissors.  I woke up with a thudding heart.  But I was only afraid, I knew, because I could not yet match their lust for life, this delirious race toward the sun.

In late July, when the vines had massed into systems thick as ropes, the growing seemed to slow slightly.  And bashfully, one unusually cool day, they bloomed: papery flowers nodding at the slightest breeze, a violet prayer.

The next time I dreamt about morning glories I was pregnant, and the entire garden situated in the sky.

What I didn’t know about morning glories: They become even more beautiful in death, their wispy skeletons still clinging faithfully to the garden fence.  But they are not dormant.  Each dry head contains a healthy cluster of small black seeds, just waiting to race me to the sun again.

I collected some seeds and sent them to my mother in a package labeled, “Brooklyn Morning Glories.”

While looking for a new housemate, a wispy twenty-something wandered through. She wore an oversized sweater though the sun shone fiercely, and her translucent fingers stroked a large turquoise necklace.

She pronounced there was “good energy” in the apartment, then turned her vague blue eyes on me and asked, “Are you spiritual?”

This is a tough question to front from a stranger, but I mustered sufficient ambiguity and turned to direct the tour into the yard when she uttered four words that instantly halted me: “Are you into nutrition?”

The word “nutrition” hung idly in the kitchen air, and I felt suddenly she had started speaking in tongues. “Nutrition …” I could not grasp any familiar hooks on which to hang a word; my mind turned to a slow panorama of images. Cod slipping off parchment paper in a pool of steaming lemon juice, five-pound jars of honey carried reverently through the L train, the wet tangle of red clover infusion, my mother’s well-worn hands layering floury dough with walnuts and cinnamon.

The pause was becoming breathtaking when I finally uttered haltingly, “Yes. I wish people realized good food just … tastes better.” Her face relaxed into a smile. “I eat mostly a raw food diet,” she whispered earnestly.

And I knew this was never going to work.

journal 8.3.13

An unusually cool evening for early August.  The utterly decadent feeling of slipping on a sweater … and, miracle of miracles, a pen is in the pocket!  I really should have at least seven pens, but only two have been in commission for some time and I have no idea where the larger lot could be.

Today the apartment received another thorough scrubbing.  Sometimes with housemates I feel like the household maid. But still, there is a deep luxury to suds and brushes, drying the mop sponge in full sun, scrubbing the porcelain sink, purifying the bathroom tiles of all smudges … twice-mopped floors underfoot, the faint lingering scent of vinegar. I also cleaned the refrigerator, the final act to make a place feel truly, certifiably clean.  I cleaned until there were no paper towels or rags left, then sorted the bookshelf.

Last night I dreamed my right hand was green, covered with scales, and growing pointed nails.  I recognized it as my real, authentic hand, and loved it.

journal 7.24.13

When I leave the air is cool and dry, where there has only been humid heat; the trees are whispering and the bangles of my necklace offer a refrain.

I suppose I’ve always thought one day I would get it: Say the right things, drink the right drinks, stand beside the right person. But there is no one I can be at a party to make that considered impression, that I would want to be.

When who I am, home now, finds the pasta sauce in the slow cooker is bubbling with a dark sheen on top. Boil noodles quietly, quietly, must not wake the housemate.

Spicy sausage, tomatoes, heat: Nothing can improve this alchemy. I pick some greens from the yard, add a smattering of oil and vinegar, and sit on the patio reading by the glow of a tealight, tomato sauce dripping down my chin.

Drudgery, n.:

When your desire for a late night walk leads past street harassers on every block, scurrying like gutter rats between the night’s trash bags, whispering in your ears and shouting at your back, until some upper region of your spine begins to tighten and tighten, and even sight of a solitary police officer in the neon glow of a bodega makes you jump, and you turn the key in your lock stiffly, and stand stupidly in a cold shower for a long time, and do not feel clean.

Last week I attempted to answer many onerous household questions.

Is it possible to buy BPA-free canning lids? (Yes, with difficulty, and multiple emails to Fresh Preserving.com.)

Why does my carbon monoxide detector go off at 50 ppm when a safe level is far lower? (No good answer, but a solitary and expensive solution from CO Experts.)

Is it possible to buy a landline that emits less radiation than a cell phone if you don’t have a phone jack? (No.)

Is my deodorant really toxic? (Yes.)

Are some essential oils estrogenic? (The jury is small and undecided.)

These rather depressing investigations only punctured a handful of the human-generated riddles surrounding me. Fine particle pollution, flame retardants, polyurethanes, DES, parabens, sulfates, nonspecified fragrances, and nanosilver will remain less delineated boogie men that occasionally haunt my waking thoughts.

It seems we must be our own landlord, pharmacist, municipal water supply, EPA, and FDA. It’s the corporation-persons’ world: we just live here.

Image: “1960 Living Color Penthouse” via James Vaughan on flickr

journal 6.21.13

Sometimes I’m afraid I won’t be able to recall what these years were like, that I haven’t written the stories because they are not all stories I want to remember.

image: modification of “Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon” by Hiroshige, 19th century, via Art Gallery ErgsArt on flickr

I was just thinking about garlic.

The basil had been in the refrigerator a few days
and was looking resentful.
There was a handful of pine nuts and good parmesan,
but no garlic.

I was thinking about garlic when I left the apartment, and locked the door.

I was thinking about garlic when I entered the first bodega,
which had garlic in netted packs
next to pale squash.
But I didn’t want five heads of garlic,
just one.

I was thinking about garlic when I entered the second bodega,
and then I remembered I had been there before
and just as before,
there was a cashier behind layers of thick plastic,
several men standing at the door,
and no customers.

Several men standing at the door,
doing nothing and
saying nothing
but staring en masse
at me.
Which is when I stopped thinking about garlic.

I was thinking about the
dull silence in the room
as I walked to the back
past the stacks of votive candles
and generic brands of flour
and by the time I reached the girlie calendar on the back wall,
in a which a topless brunette with an arched back stared listlessly at me,
I was thinking about being
gang raped in the supply closet
next to the Goya olive oil.

My breath as still as January air,
as their eyes followed the motion of my limbs,
back past the oil,
and generic brands of flour,
and votive candles,
grasping for the door
and opening it so vigorously I am thrown off balance
and must take a step back.

And I seem to stand for an eternity
in the frame of the door,
not seeing them at all,
only myself
glimmering in their eyes:
My weight, my height, the length of my hair,
the rise of my shoes,
the arch of my calves,
the things I can or cannot scrub off to
stop being
feminine, to stop being
do damn
rapeable.

Then the door closes and I am on a city street,
thinking about garlic
and rape.

Thinking about garlic and rape now,
wondering how many times
I am so intersected
in the pursuit of garlic, in the pursuit of M trains and packages.
South is that wine store I stopped frequenting
because the clerk stared heavily with wet smiles.
A few blocks west, the community garden I abruptly ceased tending
after the warden called me “princess” and tried to hold my hands.
The whole carrot harvest gone to waste,
damn it,
and now I am thinking
about carrots and rape and garlic,
as I approach the third bodega
wondering how many times a month, or week,
or day
I am so similarly startled
and then turn,
readjust,
suppress:
I am just another quiet lady you pass on the street.

I’m not a victim, not today,
how can I be
when I am so damn hungry for pesto
and I just want above all,
please,
no more,
enough,
I just want to
think about garlic.

Some days you don’t want to wake to the landlord outside your bedroom window.

Newly renovated apartments look so seductively turn-key. But turn the key (note the lock is missing the base plate), and you become a test tenant in a land of drying paint and missing doorknobs.

Outlets not work? Or need to be moved four inches to accommodate the new oven — which also does not work?

Radiator leak? Chimney leak? Ceiling leak? Can you see into the basement around the cold water pipe?

Today’s agenda: Fix doorbell. Install permanent sink legs. Discuss options for floorboard gaps. Schedule a time for the landlord to return … tomorrow.

And yet I love this apartment, for all its daily foibles. I loved it from the moment I saw it, a wasteland of drywall and sanded floorboards. And Victor was true to his word: it was beautifully redone.

I worship its gleaming hardwood floors, tiny tiled bathroom, old porcelain kitchen sink (which he kept for the love of it, while there is also a new, practical one where you would expect a sink to be). I adore its tall ceilings and proud air of, “No, they don’t make things like me anymore.”

The places you fight for, those are the ones that become home. This is an assuredly cozy-and-not-adequately-soundproof-for-two-adult-strangers home, but I’ve never lived in one so lovely. My favorite chair looks just-so in its corner, the bricks tell stories of older days, and there is soil for squash and sage seeds come spring.

And maybe, one day, the landlord will not be a daily visitor.

When I first saw apartment 1R it was midway in a birthing process called “reconstruction.” A friend lived on the third floor and informed me it would be coming to market.

I had scouted dozens already: This kitchen too grimy, that street too creepy, a few rented while I was on the train to see them.

I had lived in some 12 apartments in the past five years. I had weathered bed bugs, mice, burglary, boiling heat, no heat, dysfunctional appliances, and hostile housemates. In one brief but not unpleasant stretch, I lived in the basement bedroom of a row house while seven men occupied the top two floors.

My bones were aching for a home in a primal way I could not articulate. Moving was starting to feel like a seasonal migration, and I a species insufficiently evolved for the trek.

My friend’s apartment had its original crown-mold character and appeared well-maintained. She gave me the number of her landlord, Victor; I was surprised he answered on the second ring. Yes, the apartment was being renovated, but it was far from finished. He was there now, but doubted I’d want to see it in its current state.

“I’m on my way,” I said.

I lived a few blocks away, in a midfloor apartment where the heat cut out all winter.  When I called the landlord to complain, he shouted at me and then stopped answering my calls.  I had been told he would sign the lease after I did, an action he found increasingly wild excuses to avoid  — making my legal status as a tenant unclear.  I questioned if the man who ignored my phone calls had buried the building’s rightful owner in the basement.

I arrived outside apartment 1R on a cloudy afternoon in late August. Victor was working inside with a jackhammer. He came to the door with a thin layer of dust on his arms. He had a shock of white hair and the Brooklyn accent that is its own endangered species. 

The apartment had an overgrown yard and new white fence. But the interior was only exposed brick and potential. No appliances, no doors, no cupboards, no bathtub, no light fixtures, and — in some places — no floorboards.

“I’m going to make it look real nice,” Victor said. He looked me in the eye as he spoke. His eyes were blue and creased at the edges.  The estimated completion date was two weeks after my current lease ended, suggesting a logistical nightmare of storage and friends’ couches.  I would need to find a housemate for the second bedroom, a chancier lotto.

“I’ll take it,” I said.