life as film

Yesterday I got a text from Max, who travels a lot for his new job.
it said:
I am officially a regular at JFK Laguardia airport, gate official recognized me and said, "Hello again Mr Mendelssohn" before he even saw my ticket.

and I thought: this is so great! It's like a scene from a movie. Those small-town feel in a large city scenes the establish a character at the start of a film. It also reminded me of a long conversation Leonid and I had (via letters) about being a 'regular' somewhere; how so many shows are set up around this idea that people meet up at a bar or a coffee shop or comic book store a lot and there's this community there. How little either of us know of establishments that have that. I was edging on that at some point at the 1369 cafe in Central Sq: the people who work there seem cool and there's a lot less turnover than at most places (I even named the blond girl with the dreads in my head, don't know when that happened) . And they recognized me and one even came over to chat one time. I would come three days a week in the morning before work and get the same thing almost every time. And then I moved. But that experience felt like I was filming in a movie, in a really artsy movie that I would maybe like to watch. What other good moments are there like that, where life imitates fiction?

---

The long weekend was taken at it's fullest: on Saturday Matt and I went to Walden pond. He read Walden at Walden Pond. I finished Be Here Now by Ram Dass. We walked around and took a dip in the lake. We talked a bit about Skinner's Walden Two and the like. The kind of day I like. He's spent the whole summer pretending shorts are swim-trunks. I've spent the whole summer without any shorts. Somehow we got by; it is now September.

On Monday Sima and I finished a project we had started the weekend before; that is, we finished bleaching his hair. He just got braces and glasses (Harry Potter style, his choice) and wanted to complete a trio of changes by doing his hair as well. Mama tried at first with a pharmacy kit, but those never work well so I took over after purchasing some more heavy-duty materials at a beauty supply store. He was so excited throughout the process, even biked over to the train station to meet me.

It was also Yosef's birthday, the day before he left to go back to his second year at university. I made him coconut cupcakes; he made everyone Uzbek plov.  I told him "We are both in our 20's!" and he said "you are closer to being 80 that I am!" -- how dastardly! I miss him already.

ny winter

Another one that got lost in the anneals of the draft box, regarding the end of 2017

I am starting to think that lyricism is a frame of mind, a lens to look through at the world. It is something I have been struggling with lately. To lose the ability to look at the world cinematically is also the loss of ability to take photographs and write; and it is daunting to try and find that lens, misplaced somewhere in the attic of the mind.

After lengthy and long overdue conversation on the phone with Esther, during which she mentioned that she was going to NYC and said that I should come, I made some arrangements to take the trip. Canada, where she lives, is far away; NYC less so. The practice where I work had no patients that week anyway, so on Wednesday morning I took the subway over to south station and started my long bus ride over. I got off by FIT and entered the first place that served food. I scarfed down what amounted to two lunches; a large soup with bread, and a large piece of greasy spinach cake which was more delicious when I started it than when I took the last bite. Having completed this meal, I headed towards Wall Street. 

Leonid had warned me, somewhat embarrassed, "it's very posh". I entered the building from the wrong side, and a hotel-visitor pointed me towards the check-in desk for the apartments. Everything is gilded gold, with sweeping stone floors and an enormous Christmas tree lit up in the hall. The concierge rung up to the apartment, got Leonid's ok to let me in and buzzed the turnstiles. To my right, a couple rooms were sectioned off with slow arches, separating the postal boxes from everything else to hogwartsian effect. Finally, I made my way up in the pho-Greek style elevators to the sleek apartment with impressively large windows reaching all the way up to the tall ceilings. I claimed one of the couches to sleep on and met a flat mate that had not yet left for winter holidays. Leonid made us some drinks - a skill he's been honing recently. Eloosha swung by and it was funny to think; how different and how the same we all are, that we have known each other for more than half our lives. Once Eloosha had left Leonid and I went to get dinner; poke bowls close by, a fad that is not quite caught on in Boston. Then drinks. Then sleep.

When I got up in the morning I had the place to myself. I made myself some coffee and fell asleep again. There was something very nice about this; I often wake up tired but I am never able to do anything about it - waking up a second time well rested was lovely. I lounged around the apartment for the entire morning, reading Jean Gadget's Prisoners of Love and arranging my thoughts. For lunch, I met Leonid and Kostya by Union Sq., Dorado's and I can only remember that we ended the conversation discussing spelling. Writing now, I remember that my New Year's resolution a few years ago was to improve my spelling, the results of this resolution, like of many New Year’s resolutions, are very limited. On top of that, difficult for me to evaluate: even if my spelling has improved, my ability to catch misspellings has not so I can't do a comparison and see how far along I am.

Leonid and I then headed towards the winter market and went hunting for a supplementary Christmas gift for his girlfriend. We both bought some tights from an energetic group of Israeli women doing convincing demonstrations. More coffee and then to a party somewhere in midtown, with his law-student friends. I was immediately served an old-fashioned - his friend also honing his cocktail-making skills. A log burning in a fireplace filled the room up with smoke. Chips and another drink and talking; stories about a terrible house guest, discussions about identity. It got late and then later and then we departed. 

Leonid left early the next morning and I waved him a sleepy goodbye from the couch. Another lounging morning and then headed towards Union Sq. to drop off my backpack with Kostya who had kindly agreed to hold onto it. Then I walked 25 blocks to meet Esther and Niko. A tight warm hug! Lots of bread for lunch. A face sorely missed. And then, after a few hours, I walked back to Kostya and to my backpack, talking to Matt on the phone - it was already snowing in Boston.

Kostya continued to work and I went back to the winter market to pick out a couple of gifts and track down the artist name for a ring that was beautiful but much too expensive to buy. Twinkling lights and postcards and sweaters, mulled cider and felted ornaments. For my mother: Brooklyn truffle oil, for Matt: NY made ghost pepper hot sauce. Once Kostya was done we got pizza and headed towards the main event - Eloosha's birthday party at Olivia's place in Brooklyn. Immaculately decorated and hosted, rooms filled with people and mulled wine. Here too: it got late and then it got later, and Kostya Rebecca and I got a ride back to Kostya's place where I now again claimed a couch as my bed.

I had slept in later than usual: the living in which I slept had no windows, so no light woke me. Soon we had gathered ourselves for brunch; hipstery eggs Benedict. Then we went to get Eloosha and Olivia and some bags and back to wintry Massachusetts (though I had bought a bus ticket, but a car ride with friends won out).

Now I’m home.

Montréal

I chased the cold up north to Montreal. And it bit, hard, right into my ears and numbing my forehead and placing tears in my eyes. During the coldest night, it dipped down to -28C.

There was snow there and it sounded like rubber cows mooing when stepped on. There was hot chocolate and crepes and wine. There was some street art and underground tunnels too cold to explore properly. There were very few people outside.

After watching steam coming off the water by Old Port, and people ice skate on a rink, Matt lost feeling in his left toe and I left feeling in many more toes so we made our way over to the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.

There was an exhibit there by Ragnar Kjartansson called The Visitors - projector screens, maybe ten of them, set up around a room, each containing a scene. One holds a man with a guitar in a bathtub. Another is a couple in stout bed. A third a pianist in a large room. The porch with people lounging. The man in the bathtub begins to sing, the woman on the harp joins him and it builds. In the end they all stumbled in front of the porch and onto an open field, frolicking as they receded towards the mountains. Viewers walked from screen to screen as focus shifted. Filmed in upstate New York it made me nostalgic for Bard and the landscape there. But Montreal is nice too, Old Montreal was charming in exactly the way it sounds it would be.

I did find some winter there.

The funniest grocery purchase of my life. The most awkward hotel tipping experience. Maybe I'll come back when it's possible to stay outside past sunset.

august nyc

I said I would write about my trip to NYC - kept putting it off. It was unbearably and undeniably summer, my least favorite season, the heaviness of the heat suffocating; fingers prying at my neck.
I went to see Bengi who I had met in Berlin. It's been so many years! She was interning at the Turkish Mission in the UN. She still holds some wounder.  I had been so happy in Berlin and was so forlorn in NYC but it was still good to see her.

Saw Kostya , we ate Ukrainian food and I talked about how shitty it is to be with R. and as we parted we passed a memorial for an exploded building.
Saw Shinno who broke his femur in a motorcycle accident a year prior, listening to him tell me how he was bedridden for a month and took two months of waking up with the shakes to get off the pain medication, saying "I decided to come out of it stronger than I went in"

Saw Sasha who saw me cry furiously and powerlessly at an exhibit that aestheticized the bodies of people jumping out of buildings to their deaths, saw me walk out of a restaurant when we were trying to order Chinese to-go, saw me through the lens of her camera and captured me beautifully in spite of all the ugliness inside.
Saw Luisa who works at the Cloisters and let me in for free.
 

Misha and Nastya

Misha got married to Nastya, and Nastya got married to Misha.

In a magical house filled with handmade decorations, and a backyard filled with people I've mostly met before but whose names I can never remember and good food and plenty to drink and vases filled with flowers.

To my American (and some other non-Russian?) readers: There was a "vikup": a traditional ransoming of the bride before she is given to the groom. In this case, the three friends of the bride came up with questions and challenges, and kept the bride hidden away in a room on the second floor. Each question the groom answered correctly, he gained a step. He could ask for help from the team he assembled, but if they could not answer the question, or complete the task, they had to pay up. What is her grandmothers full name (including the patroym), what is her favorite store, what animal does she think you are most like?

Eventually he got her.

into the fold

I tried to eat every morsel of remembrance on my trip back to Annandale, it was hot and on the ride there Donnie manned the music, and Charlotte manned the wheel, and Elyse and I sat in the back awaiting our fates. "McDonalds bought a nearly complete T-rex skeleton for a museum in exchange for it's own wing. How do you guys feel about this?" Charlotte asked.

We arrived on campus and went to explore the changes. There is a new baseball field, cut out of the woods where many a person had peed on those fresh-aired Smog-filled nights. There was a bench we found by the campus center, bright blue and fresh. The ropes on the swing had been changed, and on North Campus there was a barn that had only been in the minds eye last year. We went to the burrito stand and feasted (some things are reliably good), the smoky hot sauce and cool root beer went down my glutenous throat.



Glutenous for all I had missed: hours pouring over books, long walks and conversations, screaming from the community garden to hear my anger echo against the dorms and back to me, and the beautiful ephemeral bloom of magnolia blossoms each year. So much had not changed, but I am no longer there, it is no longer mine, and I am no longer part of the Hudson Valley landscape.

After lunch, my road-trip companions dropped me off at Sorrel's house, same one she had lived in last year, and Will and Hannah (back from France just last week) were there to greet me. There is so much more responsibility as a graduating person (I had forgotten). The balancing of visitors, and family, and friends graduating with you, and looking for advice from favorite professors!

So Will skipped off and Hannah and I made dinner while the night set in, Sorrel still tending to all her other responsibilities. Hannah and I sat by the window talking about the feeling of religious devotion without religion, depression and who you surround yourself with, solitude and lonesomeness. Nina asked what rituals we do in place of those religious ones so many have. Hours passed.

When Sorrel did come, we huddled on her bed, avoiding the crowded tent party in favor of the company of two. The shunting of conversations deeper than a kiddie pool that happens in the real world did not happen here, and depth of warmth to match. The effervescent eager conversation. Here: here is my heart and mind now, know how I have changed and how I love you.

The next morning Will, Hannah and I went to the Tivoli Bakery. Cranberry-corn muffin, cinnamon bun, sandwich, coffee. We sat in the grass with Will's friends.  Then we went to see our seniors walk.

When the fireworks came, I was surrounded by the right people. "If you lie down on your back, the sound reverberates in your chest" "Oh! It's true" Kelsey responded. Will kept berating me for missing the fireworks - "Look T---! Look! Turn around!". After that we all danced.

In the morning, I watched Kelsey pack.
Now it's their turn to go.

hot peanuts cold beer

In NYC for labor day weekend, I arrived at Luisa's and Sasha's apartment a little before midnight. I had the pleasure of meetings Sasha's ginger kitten Filibuster, and in the morning we made pancakes (with Sasha, not with Filibuster). Sasha and I went to meet Hannah and Will, we walked the highline and hung out in a posh village apartment where Will was temporarily staying.

I met up with Bianca the next morning: she's leaving for graduate school in London soon. She told me about Central Park's designer and commented on how weird some the new architecture coming up is. In the afternoon I traveled down from midtown to Brooklyn to meet Shinno. We walked around and right as it started raining, we were inside eating ramen (for the first time, for me). When it stopped we walked and walked until we stopped at Skinny Denis, where an all female modern mariachi band was playing, and in hand-lettering, it said "hot peanuts cold beer" across the entrance window. Alligator lounge later, where each drink came with a complimentary personal pizza, and we were joined by Shinno's friends who'd I'd never met but they seemed familiar anyway.  

Monday was another parting with Hannah and Will, the heat had gotten to us and as we ate froyo a crime scene was being set up across the street.

I've shot three rolls and have only scanned the second one I shot. 

aquacities of thought and language

Senior photo exhibit I, Alex's senior opera recital, the senior dance show, Dani's senior music recital. Pill for reduction of lyme disease by 80% if taken within 72 hours of being bitten (the bite itself swollen and itching.) My shoulders have browned and freckled from the sun. The picking of a stem of apple blossoms and putting them into a glass milk bottle. Kelsey said “Brooklyn is the Bard afterlife”. Jono got a bird and it screams at the birds outside. Text from Yulka, 11:59pm 10/3/13: It's ok, understand. I took a picture of the magnolia tree behind my house, after asking Sorrel and Hannah to stand in front of it. Found out that (wood) Sorrel is what I know as заячья капуста (bunny cabbage). Text from Hannah, 5:07pm 3/25/14: Between ny and philly: bleakest train ride ever. Nj a hellscape. Valley of ashes. we were making a film but we could do more complicated things, such as overlay ourselves into previous renditions (so that there could be two of each person in a scene). And we decided that we could each interact with the previous version as we wished, without planning out everything before hand. But then a couple of us started killing us off. And I was upset: not only because we were being murdered (it only half felt like it was only in the movie we were making) but because a horror flick didn't fit my artistic version for the film. I screamed in fear and woke up silent. I need to install my AC again because it's getting hot and humid and my room is right under the roof. I can hear it when the rains, which I like. I tried smiling at someone from class but it he looked away mournfully. Emma is to come around noon and we will walk to the burrito stand. She switched majors from psychology to photography, I never did a senior project for studio art, taking a drawing III class in my final semester. Text from Sasha, 10:48pm 4/21/14: (I know but one soul this romantically damned.) I watched The Garden State (2004 USA) last night alone, and found it irritating. Some say say happiness is the absence of sadness. Farm fest was 4$ chili with bread and rice and we left the music when we came around in the evening. Mass Text from Kelsey, 10:49pm, drunk and standing right next to me 5/2/14: I love you ;) Went to the klezmer concert at Two Boots, eating mediocre pizza with Hannah and Will before going to Kelsey's room to watch ParaNorman (2012 USA). Sang the last full chamber singers concert for the masters choral conductors (Sicut cervus – Palestrina; Trois Chansons – Debussy; Spirit Seeking Light and Beauty – Stuart; Pater Noster – Stravinksy; Agnus Dei – Hassler; Rest – Vaughan Williams; There will be rest – Techeli; No. 8 Wenn so lind dein Auge mir, No.16 Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe – Brahms; The last words of David – Thompson). “you can't make eye contact with half of campus” Emma said as we sat in the grass eating our burritos. This is the final truth. 

 

triscuits

NY, Ny. On the platform, a girl holding a basket of flowers; another wipes away her smudged mascara tears. On the 3 train, the adult man I sit down next to - white, bearded - promptly puts his finger up his nose and proceeds to eat his found treasure. The man about to take the seat between us, wide eyed and disgusted, pivots mid motion and walks away. He continues to look disdainfully at his smart phone for the remainder of the trip. After finally getting to my destination, Luisa, Sasha, and I eat goat cheese on triscuits. me - beer, Luisa - Budweiser margarita, Sasha - Smirnoff ice. That night I woke up to a cop shouting "put your hands on the hood of the car". In the morning I passed three men "¿cuándo?" one asked "a noche" the other responded, and Sasha texted me the details later: a drunk man had driven into a truck.

The 1 train had delays and so ran express from my stop at 137 to 96th, where I wanted to get off. I arrived at Grand Central early, and hungry enough to buy overpriced falafel at the dining concourse. A guy who works there was telling his philosophy of life to a patron. He looked like Adam Levine or Max Greenfield, going on about the regular homeless people who come by. They do: they go through the trash and find barely eaten burgers and left-over Chinese food. He was originally from Croton-Harmon (a stop on my commute) and is half Puerto-Rican. I fell asleep on the train next to an anxious businessman.
I spent 3.5 hours at the library today but still have not finished writing about pre-saccadic shifts in attention, retinotopic remapping & saccadic planning. I've had dreams about hanging out friends from home (Yulka and Eloosha). It's coming though, and tomorrow I will continue, and eventually it will be done.

shifts in attention

After arriving in NYC I promptly got sick with a stomach bug, which swept me off my feet like true love does not. I met up with my cousin Haim who I had not seen in 13 years; he is now bearded and studying to be a rabbi.

Now I'm back in the Hudson Valley, trying to make my stomach accept the food I offer it. I went to the studio and drew for a bit for class tomorrow. Goals for the rest of today: write. write all I know about pre-saccadic shifts in attention. And to get some more food down.
wish me luck.

pizza coffee whiskey beer

I'm really excited about  tonight, but I'll write about it later.

Friday night the lab people had a party and I got back at 3:30am. Still not 100% how that happened, but there were some nice graduate students for the engineering department who joined us. Saturday I wandered around Brooklyn until I finally found Essie's place. She made me oladushki. Then Sunday morning was my last day in NYC, I said goodbye to Sasha and cracked open the door to Luisa's room but she was still sleeping. Met up with Valya and two of her friends from Princeton and Liza and Kostya. Pizza, coffee, I had class the next day but I put off leaving until last moment, coming back to Red Hook at 10:30. I sat between Andres and a girl from Mumbai who goes to the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) on the train back.

eat cake

Monday I met up with Kostya in the West Village, by his university, and went to Three Lives & co. (a bookshop) where he got a book of essays, which made him feel like he had bought contraband. Then we continued our adventure at The Strand (where he got two more books and I got three). 
Spent the next morning battling the snow, but made it the Jewish Museum for the Chagall exhibit. Even on a Tuesday afternoon it was pretty crowded, but Chagall is one of the first artists I ever remembered.
Wednesday I went to a bar in Harlem called The Shrine with Ben, and there were a few sets of music and debates about the pursuit of happiness, and then we parted and I went to meet my housemates&friends at Barcelona Bar in midtown. Their shots taste like cocktails - Surfer on Acid, at least, did, that's the only one I got. I was tempted to get Dante's Inferno until I found out it contained hot sauce. Luisa put Taylor Swift on the jukebox machine, and Sasha tried wrestling me with two arms against one of mine. A guy talking to Luisa thought we were all teachers: the bartender said we look aloof. After that we went to the bodega by our apartment and got cake-mix and icing.

Eating cake at past 1 am on a Wednesday.

laundromat

It’s 2am and I was planning on being asleep right now, but the yarn of time slipped through my fingers. The music outside is loud and rhythmic and of my time.

Thursday night I came back to the apartment and heard a girl on the other side of the wall (outside, walking on the street) say “no, you're not listening. My mother is a very forgiving person. All you need to do is show her that you can be a good girl” - in a voice filled with patient insistence. I had been out with Kostya, at his friend Cat’s birthday party. It was at the Bowery Diner in the Lower East Side. Happy hour drinks enticed me to order cocktails for the first time since I was 18: The Green Antoinette, and a Grace Kelley (which had a candied hibiscus flower). I think the birthday girl enjoyed herself. She tried convincing me to come to Hawaii with her next winter vacation.

When I was little, my father would sometimes take me with him to the laundromat of the apartment complex we lived in. I would get to line up the quarters in a row in the little slots before pushing them in to be eaten by the machine. The place I went to this morning had a different way of putting in the quarters (just one slot, where you put the coins in one by one: five for the wash, and one for the dryer, but three times). After that Sasha and I went to the Guggenheim. The Wool exhibition wasn’t my favorite, but they also had a small room with some late Kandinsky paintings and another room with various painters (Picasso, Cézanne, Gauguin …) Mostly I enjoyed the architecture of the building: walking along the inner rim, the hum of vertigo by my side. 

wax and envelopes

A couple days ago Sasha and I went to park nearby, and ended up photo-hunting a bit. On the way back to the apartment, we walked past this tree, covered in layers of candle was. A guy walked towards us and stopped, taking his earbudds out. "Hi" I said, "hey" he said, and then "that's for my boy, he died", and I could see the that someone had traced the letters "RIP" into the wax when it was still warm.

I walked into the '99¢ more or less' store and asked the cashier if they had envelopes and he pointed to his left - "keep going" he said until I finally found them. My pea coat on, hair up in a bun, scarf, as usual. He rung me up for $1.30 and I started digging through my bag in search of my wallet, plopping down a stack of articles I'm reading. "You're a teacher" he said with certainty, as I put down a quarter and nickle on top of the bill "no, I'm not, what made you think that?" "well, the papers, and your look - you look like a smart woman".

[for all my looks, I have yet to figure out how to make these pigeon peas, they are taking forever to cook]

m&m cookies

Perhaps one would expect four 20-somethings in NYC to go out and have a wild Friday night. (I don't know who you are, reader, but perhaps you know better than to expect this of me?). We got two bottles of red wine and made m&m cookies and stayed up until a pointless hour. Saturday I headed for soul food at Amy-Ruth’s in Harlem with some people, before going to some shitty bar in upper west side. Wouldn’t say that food spoke to my soul, personally, but then I don’t like fried food or rigorously salted food or food I have to pay more than 9$ for, and they are famous of their fried chicken on a waffle, which isn’t something I would order, so I’m a bad judge. The bar was Bourbon Street, and had bras hanging from the ceiling from all the girls that had danced they away in exchange for a free drink - bar policy. Not sure why: bras are way more expensive than drinks. The TV screens glared at us from all the walls.

Yesterday I went to Spectacle Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see a movie with Damon. The theater was small, so that we missed it twice before finally realizing that what we had been walking past were not apartment buildings. The movie was a rather odd 1987 Japanese documentary called The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. Odd because there’s a combination: the main characters search for truth of the horrendous campaign during WWII by the Japanese in New Guinea. Then there’s the ideological side of what makes a good man, what it means to bring peace to the dead, how to prevent further wars, what is the cost of bringing up the truth, the use of violence. Then there’s the characters themselves, the veteran heading the expedition is, for lack of a better word, mad. 

3$ falafel and 2.50$ for baklava