On the Q23

carpetbagging
yoga books and makeup kits, a philosophy-ophile
siren-singing
life the universe and everything, fortune cookie style

I've Been Preparing For This Moment My Entire Life

Point A: Me
Point B: The Subway

Scattered strategically in between us are optimistic young people, equipped with saddle bags and clipboards. If they get you, you're locked into battle for at least 5 energy-sapping minutes. Who has more fortitude — that's all it ever comes down to. But they can't engage you if you don't make eye contact. She's looking towards the storefronts, I take the curb. He turns to the street, I dash to the wall. This one's occupied. This one's facing forward. Facing the paraplegic guy who sells m&ms. Facing me! I stop.

Stand still and wait. He turns. GO! Subway reached. Don't look back.

And finally, so many years later, I realize what Pokemon was actually training me for.

Always In August

It wasn't really worth fighting about, but then it also wasn't not worth fighting about, and anyway, you've been in a bad mood for a while now, for a lot of reasons. The woman next-door has decided to take up the piano. And so she practices, everyday but Sunday, from three-thirty to five-thirty. It must be about that time, then.

How did it get so late? Roll over on your parents' bed and wonder how close they are to where they're going. Probably more or less halfway. The dogs will want to eat soon. But first just stare, out at the tree branches, down at the bus stop and the three houses you've stared at, just like this, so many times before.

The stillness that follows the storm. The leaves rustling just outside your half-open window, the new neighbor kicking a ball to his little boy, someone whistling, and those lilting, uncertain piano scales, drifting along in the afternoon breeze:

The things that hold the world together.

Have Another

Why am I even talking to this guy?

You can't be profound while talking about netting capital. You just can't. But he doesn't get this. He also doesn't get what I mean when I say, "I think you gotta just put yourself out there in the Universe, and then it'll come back to you, you know? But not from where you were looking, not from where you thought it would be." So now he either thinks I'm New Age, or he doesn't think much about me at all.

"Have another drink," he says. But what he means is, 'I'm not engaged to her anymore.'

"This is full," I respond.

"It's water."

"It's vodka."

His friend has his arm around a girl it seems it costs three shots to put your arm around. I remember when all I had charged was a virgin daiquiri.

"But water's a good idea."

I get up and push my way to the bar. Past friends. Past friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends. Past so many strangers. They garnish water with a lemon wedge here. 

"For fuck's sake."

Whispered, it sounds sort of like a prayer.

Fun Fact: I Have Scottish Folk Music On My iPod

Taking a long walk where the really tall trees shade the really big houses on the really steep hills, listening to Scottish folk music and bantering with an old Irish man in a sun hat who seems to have appeared out of nowhere, and who disappears just as quickly. You're right, sir, this is a beautiful area.

I feel like a Hobbit.

I Had To Realize That Some Of This Was Tongue-In-Cheek

That's what he told the PBS viewers out there as he led the cameras on a tour of the more outrageous commissions on display in his wood-working studio. Lately, he's been depicting New Mexican interpretations of saints driving contemporary cars.

After-hours on public television is a world unto itself, beckoning the exhausted, the drunk, the bored, to settle in and engage the quirky subjects and muted colors and soft-spoken voices.

Glass ornaments line a simple wooden table. Their creator explains that her work is largely feminist, and that she draws her inspiration from the inevitability of death. One woman goes on a cross-country journey to interview her late mother's favorite cartoonists from the New Yorker, while a British food traveler forces a smile as he eats a thick brown paste containing at least one raw egg, so as not to offend his Saudi Arabian host.

It's hard to say when that transition occurs. When what begins as camp, as awkward funny, slowly becomes endearing, becomes unendingly fascinating, becomes the comforting glow of an old friend in the dark—always open-minded though somehow never full-of-it, if ever a little tongue-in-cheek.

Help Me, If You Can

"When Christopher Robin asked the Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather's name, and had been in the family for a long time. Christopher Robin said you couldn't be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could, because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will, which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two names in case he lost one—Trespassers after an uncle, and William after Trespassers." - A. A. Milne

I would like to pay the Hundred Acre Wood a visit sometime soon. Or rather, it's about that time of year when the Hundred Acre Wood decides that it wants me to pay it a visit. I think you can only find your way there when the air has that certain sweet sort of thickness to it, and the sun shines in that way it does on days when logic is replaced by a truer sort of truth. The kind of day when the simpler something is, the bigger an adventure it turns out to be.