something about nothing

Matt likes order. I try to oblige, sometimes - we now try to go grocery shopping on Thursday. Last trip was therefore almost a week ago. 

We were checking out and the self scan broke. I just wanted the limes! But the belt couldn't sense them. After we had a highschooler try and help us a couple of times to no avail, I told the guy behind me "at this point you should probably switch. You know that cognitive trick that prevents people from switching because they've invested time in a line? That's the only reason to keep standing here." After a couple more minutes, he nodded at me, acknowledging that it was time to break away, and switched to another lane. The girl behind him i convinced to switch as well. The next guy came, two florescent bottles of fanta in hand. "And they aren't helping you?" he asked, skeptical of my statement that it would probably be a good idea to find another lane "well, they are, but it's not something they can resolve with just swiping the card" (one of those employee override cards) - he broke into a smile understanding that this will not be resolved quickly.

These are banal moments on paper. I suppose they add up and make up the majority of a life, though not the parts that are typically documented in ones memoir. The other day I was sending something for the doctor I work for. His sister had come to visit and purchased a couple pieces of furniture she wanted sent to her home in France. One of these things I have arranged a special company to send it - that can insure something as expensive as this antique, and be gentle with it. To send the folding chair I went to UPS, and while waiting for the Doctor to ok the price of shipping asked the two guys who were working: what's the weirdest thing you've shipped?
Right off the bat: a duck corpse. Frozen, being sent to a taxidermist. He said he had called the infection control people and they said it was fine.


Also: live fish. "I told the girl they would probably die and then when they arrived dead, she called and accused me of murdering her fish. You have to have thick skin"
Almost got to send a plaque of cultural significance, but UPS only insures up to 40 dollars, not the million they needed.

And while I feel that perhaps I have lingered to long in this post-undergraduate limbo, I have to say: I have gotten much better at talking to strangers; those standing in line behind me, those who work jobs similar to mine. And I appreciate that, drink it in.

cheers to the everyday and trying to negotiate order in a disordered world

Yucca Cane

At the Kjarvalsstaðir art museum, we stumble for a second time on the work of Ragnar Kjartansson. The entire museum was a retrospective on him, the big one being an almost endless opera piece with multiple pianos and singers set up surround-sound in a large hall. Walking around the hall allowed for interaction of music/space and the social aspect that comes with knowing that the performers are there for the whole day and so walk in and out to supply themselves with more water and switch pairings and stop playing for a little bit; the dance of life happening during a concert you could walk through.  

This was exciting because on our first trip together, Matt and I had seen the same artists work in Montreal. And though I'm still more excited about the piece we saw in Canada, it was pleasantly serendipitous. (and, still without a tent, we used the museum's wifi to book a room for the night.) Now - another hall had photographs hung on the walls, and yucca cane plants and boom boxes on the floor. I don't remember if there was any sound but I'm going to take a step back to the Yucca cane.

The only reason I know what that is is because Matt and I had recently acquired one for our apartment. This happened maybe three weeks before we left for the trip. I love plants. I have a few and I like that they add life the the kitchen, but also decided not to get too many more because Matt likes space to look neat, and visually plants are more chaotic than neat. But one day Matt was looking around and decided that we need a plant, urgently, because there was what felt like a hole in the room. Since I had felt that hole for a while (and in many other places; I like spaces to be crammed) we soon found ourselves at Ricky's Flower Shop a few minutes drive away. The place is like Mary Poppin's handbag: bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, filled with all sorts of leafy-friends to take home. We looked at three different pots filled with three yucca canes each and finally picked one out and took it home with us. A plant is like a pet that you don't need clearance for from your landlord. I was quite happy with our exotic new addition.

I don't know when it happened, but it was sad: perhaps the middle cane came to us ill, or it simply because ill soon upon entering our abode. In either case, it started to wilt and droop and ooz terribly stinky black goop. Trying the clean it up my hands got covered in the stench with the slightest dab of sap. I read up on the internet on how to help the infirm plant, and bought insecticide. And I sprayed it daily with the smelly all-natural insecticide. And when we left for Iceland we had a weak hope that it would make it. The plant only needs to be watered about once every two weeks, so this trip was perfect in terms of watering.When we returned it had clearly made a turn for the worse. It reeked, and as I tried to pull it out of the ground the bark pealed off into my hands. And since the other two were perfectly happy as they were, we went for the kill. It looks like a murder-crime scene, ft yucca plant The other two are still healthy: may they not grow too quickly.

Sleep Deprived in Reykjavik

We landed in Keflavik International Airport at 4:35 am. I had not slept on the plane. Dragging through a bog of exhaustion, we found our way to Joe and the Juice. We drank our shake/juice, and then we made our way down to the baggage claim.

A note on Joe and The Juice: it is a chain, there are two spots at the airport and at least two in Reykjavik. The name, it isn't a good one, refers to the fact that they have both a juicing machine and a coffee machine. The name, and the exact type of terrible that it is, is a good representation of the names of shops we found in Reykjavik. Names are: idontspeakicelandic (tourist shop) bad taste (music shop) farmers and friends (like words with friends! but not a cross-word puzzle game, an expensive clothing store!)

Many tourists are from the US, UK or Canada, insuring a lot of English is spoken around you - and leading to most signs and all tourism workers speaking at least some English. We were lucky: we were earlier in the season and the weather wasn't always great, so we managed to avoid some of the tourist hoards. But they certainly exist, and I think the weirdly English-named shops are a good indication of that. From the USA, more tourists come than there are native Icelanders; and we are hardly the only ones. 

Matt sarcastically approved me putting up this photo if I labeled it as sarcasm. Joe as famous sculpture.

We walked down and looked and looked and did not find our baggage. We filled out forms and found out that the next incoming flight from Boston is not for another 24hrs. So we walked out of the airport with only our backpacks and picked up the 4wd rental (a silver Suzuki Vitara) and drove towards Bergsson Mathús to get breakfast. After this my mind started drifting off to sleep: we managed to climb to the top of Hallgrímskirkja (a contemporary-looking church) but after that I dozed off in the car. 

view from Hallgrímskirkja 

Once I woke up, we headed to the Kjarvalsstaðir art museum. Then we walked along the river, entered the Harpa music building and finally collapsed in our hotel room bed at Captainn Reykjavik (which considering we had found only a few hours previously, was quite nice) 

from inside Harpa music hall

We slept for three hours and went to Matwork for food.  We kept looking around and almost choosing places to eat because they were called Matthis and thisMat(t). Turns out Matur means food, not a shortened Matthew. I fell asleep, after a very long day, at 11:30 pm. Matt fell asleep at 1am, and it was still light out.

Packing for Iceland

Dear Reader:

I know I have long been absent. If you have been here in the past I am surprised by you; that my distance has not created an un-passable abyss. I apologize. I thank you. I will try to be better, as many of us try.

Today I woke up in the US again, back in Somerville.
On Sunday, The 4th of this month, I was here as well, packing.
Things I forgot to pack: cold medication, camera battery charger, a warm hat, gloves.
Things I did not forget: all the camping gear, sweaters and warm socks, a camera with low battery.

And so, Matt and I caught a ride to the airport, checked our bags (19.5kg for the heavier one, perfect) and got in line.  Matt's carry-on getting slowly examined on the side for unknown reasons and we sprinted through Logan and were the last ones onto the flight.

Things we knew to expect: white nights, gravel roads, sheep, hotsprings
Things we did not know to expect: the wind, getting sick, endless volcano fields

And so starts our trip to Iceland

stapler

I recently started working at a the front desk of a neurology office in Mt. Auburn hospital. I make packets to give to patients when they come in, call them to remind them of appointments coming up in a week, take vitals, call other offices for notes on new patients, scan some papers and fax others, check if insurance is active. I staple things a lot. It's dull but I won't get another concussion. As my former boss and family friend said "they pay you more for easier work, right?" - which is exactly the case. Do the paper shuffle till you drop.

In all this route work, I had this moment of child-like surprise when my stapler ran out. A second later I wanted to laugh out loud at the fact that I somehow expected the stapler to never cease stapling.

It really did feel like being a child: I suppose as you grow older there are fewer genuine surprises in store. I certainly didn't expect my surprise to be sourced in a stapler.

I remembered that in kindergarten we had a project were we had to bring in 100 of something (jelly beans, crayons, stickers...) I, inevitably doing it the night before, panicking in a way that seems almost humorously familiar now, having procrastinated on the project which we were likely given at least a month to do, stapled a piece of cardboard 100 times and brought that in. Not very aesthetically pleasing, but it did the job. It was for the 100th day of school. Now everything is counted in months, years, pages written, books read, places lived. 100 days. How quaint. How kindergarten.


(I had one of those flying dreams last night: put on warm clothes but couldn't track down warm socks for the high autumnal air. Was brought into the air by air sweeping up a kite which was held by a string which held me and carried me up until my arms spread out could hold me, along with magical powers, sand I was swept up by the current for hundreds of miles. Landed somewhere and something like a spy movie, or like His Dark Materials not quite clear. I love flying...)

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.

Construction

On October the 19th, we were over at Em's. This was the night I had smoked a full cigar, exhaling it through my mouth and inhaling the smoke through my nose into my lungs until I felt too dizzy to sit. I lay down and listened to the sounds of the room, exclamations and roaring laughter gave way to chitter and chatter and quieter conversations, and by then the world had stop spinning so much around my body. Em and Launti had gone to bed. World Matt and I stayed up watching "That's My Boy", which World claims is the movie of his people (set in his hometown of Somerville). I said we should go for a walk, but a little past midnight World fell asleep in his chair, mid-sentence.

It was drizzling outside when we left the apartment. I used a gray blanket from the couch as a cloak and Matt pointed at a building not too far away and said it looked like Christmas lights so we went towards the twinkling, found the gates to the site unlocked, and climbed, ten stories up, with a view of the city spreading out below us on all sides. I wanted to return to take photos so on the 14th of December we did. It was unseasonably warm and rainy, and in two months glass had arrived to the first nine stories of the building, and wooden beams had appeared on the first couple floors. But the gate was still unlocked and the security guard was not doing his job, so we went up and up again. Here are a few of the photos from that hunt -

different building, still twinkled

 

 

 

Truth and Beauty

At the very end of my shift on the 31st, a code was called that resulted in three restraints. That was how I exited 2015.

They say your year will go the way you entered it. I entered it with warmth. I was surrounded by people I've known since I was ten. I called my family in Arizona. I messaged those who I wanted to carry with me from 2015 into 2016.

My first conversation of the year was
Eloosha, with a smug look: Huh, doesn't feel very different.
Me, insistent on magic: almost like New Years is an artificial time construct, you jerk.

traditions carried for generations: Oranges or clementines. Champagne. A table laden with food. Ирония судьбы (The Irony of Fate) playing in the background. Saying goodbye to the Old Year before saying hello to the New. Family. A New Years tree. Sparklers and fireworks. Snegurochka and Ded Moroz. Gifts. Love.

First Day of the Year, discussing bunnies as secret illigal pets during college
"I only ever saw two bunnies at Yale, one was named Truth and the other Beauty, and one of them almost certainly overdosed on cocaine" (which one though, is unknown)

I woke up the next morning and knit for a little bit before falling asleep and waking up with everyone else: all of us soon transitioned to one bed, a lump and warmth and promises to try to stay horizontal for as long as possible. Liza said "my new years resolution is to keep my heart over my head for as long as possible". Eloosha said "I think with my hands". I tucked those away.
Wasting time to the fullest with cuddling and music and late brunch. 
The next morning I woke not in my own bed yet again, and read Autobiography of a Corpse (Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky translated by Joanne Turnbull, 1920's) while surrounded by sleeping beauties.

I made it back to my apartment eventually, only to go back to the same company for a conversation that lasted hours, a midnight visitation and trying to breathe and be brave.

2015

2015 was holding my breath. I lived so much this year.

Time passed with a moon dipped in venom, so many friends visiting - Adrienne, Hannah, Will, Sorrel, a Bernie rally attended. I smoked my first cigar and felt sick - stuck with the habit of holding the smoke in my lungs. I got hit by a car while biking, and had too much to think anything of it. I went to a lecture on John Weiners at Harvard at Kelsey's urging, hundreds of miles away in Columbus, Ohio. I got sick. I spent a few days in NH with my coworkers and three dogs. I got told that I was looking exceedingly bird-like. My flatmates and I threw a party and named it "Crunksgiving". I climbed Mt. Lincoln and Lafayette with my father.

each of those is a story, a vignette.  maybe I'll have time to tell them this year.

I read a few books - Cat's Cradle in a burst of "oh! reading in English, I've forgotten!". On Adrian's advice (and my parents as well)  How to Win Friends and Influence People. When I felt lonely with R, I would read his favorite book; 100 Years of Solitude - it went by quick, so did he, the irony not lost on me. House of Leaves, which I had gifted myself for my birthday. Matt then lent me City of Glass. A project started by Hannah and Sorrel led me to read chunks of A Short History of Wine, I Drink Therefore I am; A Philosopher's Guide to Wine, and A History of the World in Six Glasses.

I'm ready to breath out.

not a ghost

Months passed I had a dream - A boy I liked from high school but had lost touch with was dancing with me. It was in a building that used to be a psychiatric hospital years ago, by a lake with tall stone walls and hallways that echoed. Ghosts would pop up and then disappear just as suddenly. I've since wondered: if ghosts are usually freed to the spiritual world by resolving the issue that was tying them to the earth past their due, what do you do with a ghost of a paranoid schizophrenic? Are they more likely to get stuck here forever, unable to be brought clarity?

A week ago a friend I had in college killed himself. From my last communications with him, it was clear he had become increasingly disorganized and paranoid, overburdened with false guilt, annoyed by the lack of freedom. When Kelsey called I knew from her voice what she was going to talk to me about, I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.

He had been so sensitive, he was so bright - I can’t imagine what it is like to see yourself losing that, especially for a person to whom intellectual acuity is paramount - emotional sensitivity key - and he certainly felt that the medications blunted him in so many ways. 

At one point he had been one of the people I hung out with a fair amount, he came to a couple of my movie nights and I took photos for This Bardian Life, and we went out dancing, and he came to my 21st birthday party and numerous lunches and dinners together, he called wine vino and had a particular way he nodded his head, large bony hands, hair that had to be constantly swept to the side, low voice and eyes that paid attention when you talked; conversations not to be had in passing. 

I wish I had more I could find of him, it's a strange drawback of having communications in person, in vivo; you can't look over them later. I read something for TBL, he was thinking maybe I should expand it, I was concerned -- 
You mean you think the re-work would weaken it? I think that's reasonable. If you're interested in a remaster, go for it, although, with my bit of experience with creative work I was thinking your past self might have more to say. But it's up to you, of course. Send me the new version if you're comfortable; i'm also open to talking more about your process if you'd like.
 

We lost touch, he had started to lose something, and I was busy and attributed it to other things until we had stopped trying to speak to each other once I had graduated over a year ago now and only recently did I hear from him again, but not him, some other person. I miss the he who I knew, who he was, but both are entirely gone now. I know I can’t feel like I could have done something, but I wasn’t there, one of my last messages to him an apology for us not having maintained contact, and somehow I want to apologize for him being dead, to apologize to him for the sorrowful mix of genetics and environment that led him to not be here anymore, age 22 forever, for the world for having played such a cruel trick on him, that I couldn't do anything to stop it.

I don’t believe in restless ghosts: I have my memories of you on this side. 

affections

Let me start in small strokes. I am feeling better than the last time I wrote. The boy who would evaporate on me has evaporated altogether, and the only thing that's keeping me from writing 'gone forever' is that I don't like ultimatums and certainties; believe in eventuality and chance. He lives fifteen minutes away but he has evaporated as he was, as people sometimes do. I've always kept this out of here but here it is anyways, I have changed and so has how and what I write. And so on Friday Paras came from NYC, because he is not one of those people who just goes away. Amy showed up and Adrian and his brother, and we all went to play pool and were so cool, so cool.

Yosef showed up the next day and we drank tea and drank words and eventually realized that we ought to take a walk so we did, circling around Inman Sq. I'd given him a haircut so he looked more civilized and in the evening Mama picked him up and dropped off another wild-haired brother, also seeking a haircut. I'd said to Sima that he could sleep over as a birthday present and that's what we did. I'm glad that I'm fourteen years older than him because if we had shared a womb the way we shared a bed I certainly would have been the smaller twin. I woke up a few times to find myself taking up a third of the bed to a child half my size. In the morning I made him oatmeal and then he read for half an hour for his school homework, reading excerpts he thought particularly funny aloud. I gave him a haircut and we walked to Harvard Sq where he got frozen yogurt - he left content.