Where I Came From

Twilight closes in and I step outside. The dry air is silent, hovering on the verge of darkness. Trees have grown up along the old path, obscuring the view of the meadow below. Once a tiny sapling in my memory, a large oak now huddles in a verdant clump surrounded by young pines. The growth of these trees surprises me but then I am reminded time has been passing. And not a little bit of time. It will be 20 years this summer since I left, all my belongings thrown carelessly into big black garbage bags. I drove away down that long dusty hill in my Toyota Tercel, with pictures of Robert Smith taped to the back window, blasting some staticy ‘modern rock’ radio station. I was headed to the big city for college and a better life – to forget my small town shoddiness. To leave the chaotic, eccentric poverty of my parents’ weird lifestyle, to make new and interesting friends, to take drugs and stay up all night, to not be fat, to not be a virgin.

Here I am no longer a child, not even young anymore. And still the silence and isolation of this place holds me in its thrall. I can see now that it is beautiful in its remote uncultivated way. My Dad struggles incessantly, fencing gardens, pulling weeds, cutting grass, sawing down trees, repairing old buildings and yet everything rebels and returns to nature – paths overgrown, thistles and weeds thrive, trees rot and fall under the weight of winter snow, the buildings slip into disrepair – the wood going grey and brittle, birds eat the fruit from the trees, gophers pilfer the gardens and rattlesnakes lurk in the grass.

How can this relate to my life in New York City? These worlds seem at odds, split entirely from one another. And yet I am part of them both, even though I have wanted to disappear. I am from here. This solitary wilderness still flowers within me, inescapable as nature.

Finally Over It

I think I might be getting the hell outta Dodge - NYC, actually. After being fired from yet another pathetic peon job by a disgusting power mongering misogynist, I think the proverbial straw may have broken my back. I just can't take this anymore. I can't take this tiny room in which I sleep, in a place that is not my home, where nothing is mine, the incessant thrum of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway roaring outside my window day and night, the quintessence of temporal space signifying nothing. Everyone is on their way somewhere but here itself is nowhere in particular, not a real destination. My life is nowhere, not a real destination, not a point on a map. I give up trying to find meaning. City College of New York is a bureaucratic mess hamstrung by budget cuts, not even able to offer its graduate students enough classes so that they may graduate, the escalators broken for 4 months, collecting garbage. Everything seems run down and full of junk. The men are jerks. I just don't have the energy to go on.

I want to go way, if only I knew where...

Dreams

A Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

ESL

By now it should be apparent that I am slightly obsessed with foreign men. This results in some rather interesting text exchanges.

Friday Feb 25th:
12:21am Habibi: Hello my love!!!
Me: Hi
H: You will stay my love forever
Me: What's up?
H:Where are you come to see now
H: Habibati are you in the bed?
Me: No out on the LES with my friend.
H: I'm home I can't sleep
Me: My friend just ran out out and left me alone at this pizzeria
H: I wait for you take cap I pay for it

My friend L and I had gone out earlier in the evening to watch a Japanese folk singer from Astoria play at Pianos. After the show,the guys from the band came over and gave us free drink tickets because they said we seemed like the only people who were really into it. Then we met these crazy guys who grabbed us and started dancing with us. They bought us more drinks. Needless to say we ended up wasted at a pizza place in the LES. That's where my friend got into a fight with the guy at the counter who swore she ordered 2 slices and she swore she only ordered one. She stormed out in a rage and left me there drunk and confused with my pizza. That's when Habibi started contacting me. Meanwhile this other guy sat down next to me and we preceded to have a 45 minute long conversation about race relations and black men dating white women (he was black). Habibi was calling and texting me the whole time. In the end he drove into town and swooped me up in his minivan. Then the other guy started texting me, "You are cool. We should hang out sometime. XO". Habibi took me to his place fed me chocolate, climbed in the shower with me, washed my hair for me and put me to bed. I was wearing a vintage dress he had given me from his store and my stockings had a hole in them. The next day he pulled out a new pair of tights and gave them to me. He can be really cool sometimes.

Tonight as I write this its snowing/raining outside. I texted Habibi earlier to see if he wanted to hang out.
I just got this message from him:
'I'm staying home very bloomy wether' (I think he means 'gloomy'...)
Oh, all of this makes me laugh. Not in a mean way, its just funny to me.

The good times never end - or do they?!

I've spent my whole life surrounded
and I've spent my whole life alone
I wonder why I never wonder why
The easiest things are so hard
I just want, I just want love
I just want, I just want love
I just want, I just want love
I just want something
Something for nothing
Something, something for nothing

I'm a beggar and I'm a chooser
I'm accused, I'm an accuser
But nothing's unconditional

I hold the whole world accused
I've only got myself to blame
I wonder why, I never wonder why
The easiest things are so hard

-Unconditional, The Bravery

Sometimes I feel the urge to warn my younger friends about the perils of perpetual singlehood. That they might fall into the vacuous hole of endless city nights - drunken revelry, dead end jobs, meaningless sex, trippin' around 3rd world countries - until one day they wake up a decade or more later wondering what the hell happened. But its fun. Hell yeah, its fun! Too much fun. That's the problem. I have made a career out of avoiding responsibility, conjuring up casual romances and 'exploring my opportunities'. While I don't believe in regret - I think its a wasted emotion, if I knew then what I knew now (forgive me for this horrible cliche), I might have have slowed down a little, taken things a little more seriously.

But I keep my mouth shut. Everyone staggers through life and eventually finds their own way. Such are the perils of the modern age. We are free but its so easy to get lost.

Fate

I watched the Adjustment Bureau tonight. Its all about fate versus free will. Without totally giving away the end, the movie basically suggests that if you fight hard enough for something that you truly desire you can break out of the web of preordained fate. Put another way, 'Fortune favors the brave'.

As I walked home through the soft spring night, I started thinking about why I came to New York. I came here to change my destiny, to shake up fate. I felt like my life was stale, monotonous, whirling in a slow motion circle of vacuous wasted time and loneliness. So I came here. Now I am walking down these dark Brooklyn streets, the moon shining on the brownstones and though I have come so far, I still feel the same tug of inertia. It still feels like I am going to be alone forever. That's the worst of it. I have tried so hard, god knows, I have tried. I've fought to change, to grow, to take chances, to try different things. I have given so many guys chances each time thinking maybe I could find love with this person. And yet every time it eludes me. People say stop trying and it will find you. I've given up too. Nothing changes. I've never felt so powerless about anything in my life. Nothing I do, or feel or think or pray for can possibly seem to shake the pattern of my solitary life.

Pick Up Lines

I was out at a bar last night with a bunch of girl friends. A lone guy lingering near the end of the bar approached me.

Him: "You're really pretty."
Me: "Thanks."
Him: "Would you like to hook up?"
Me: Incredulous, "WHAT?!!! NOOOOOOO!"
Him: "Why not?"
Me: "You don't even know me! You have barely even spoken to me!"
Him: "Well, Adam didn't have to speak to Eve."

At this point I just started roaring with laughter and turned away. I told all my friends and everyone was dying. The guy quickly exited the bar.

Really?! Is this what's its come to these days?! You don't even know my name and you are gonna approach me and ask me if I'd like to hook up with you? And the Adam and Eve thing is just ridiculous. I can't believe it!

'Feminism' and its Discontents

I must admit that the average middle class white guy from this country holds little appeal for me. The accomplished 30 something white mothers I observe in my neighborhood rushing around with their jogging strollers and yoga mats, clad in expensive athletic wear, valiantly struggling to get back to their 'pre-baby' weight - all while holding down a lucrative, full time professional job, attempting to maintain a loving and passionate friendship with their husband, be the best mother they can be, in addition to setting aside time for weekends away and cocktails with 'the girls', do not inspire me. They seem overworked, stressed and exhausted, with too many people to please.

My otherwise liberal friends gasp in horror when I tell them I am dating a Muslim guy. But to me it makes sense. I feel oppressed by the tyrannical beauty and success standards impressed upon me by my supposedly open-minded, educated middle class white peers. In fact, it is in such company that I feel like the biggest, fattest failure. I know the Muslim world is not known for its enlightened attitude toward women (and that's an understatement in certain countries!). However, I feel compelled in the spirit of open-mindedness , cultural curiosity and (waning) optimism to check it out. Realistically any man attached to a religious dogma of any sort (whether it be Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, etc) will probably not be for me. But just because a man is white and educated doesn't mean he's not a sexist pig and just because a man is a Muslim doesn't make him a de facto misogynist.

Today's modern woman is expected to be everything to everyone - loving mother, sexy spouse, affectionate companion, capable career woman, faithful daughter, supportive friend, all while looking amazing doing it. By god, you'd better not get fat! I'm sorry but there are some serious issues here. If this is enlightenment, then count me out. While I have zero desire to return to the restrictiveness of the 1950's, there has to be a more compassionate way. The unlovely truth is that we still live in a capitalist, patriarchal society - throwing ourselves into a Darwinian rat race of social ascendence and punishing ourselves over our bodies is not liberation - its enslavement.

Crazy for being so Crazy

So I sort have been hanging out with a guy I met that runs the falafel cart at my school. I had been eying him for a while, he is quite handsome and sweet. Last summer he commented on a T shirt that I was wearing - a Roxy Music T shirt that depicted a girl in her under ware holding her hands over her breasts. I chatted with him for a couple minutes. He was told me he lived in Queens. I told him I did too. He came here recently from Egypt. Anyway, I was instantly attracted to him but I knew the whole thing was a bad idea. I've been down this path before - falling for a guy from another country who works insane hours, is just learning the language and the culture, etc, etc. It was a lot of fun, believe me, but it ultimately ended in heartbreak with my last boyfriend from Brazil. So I purposefully ignored him for the next 3 months, even though I passed by him once or twice a week when I was at school.

Then, in some dumb temptation of fate, this Valentine's Day I decided to stop by and say 'Hi'. 'M' greeted me with such friendliness it was as if no time had passed, he remembered my name and everything I had told him in our prior conversation 3 or 4 months before. He said he saw me walk by all the time and asked why I didn't come talk to him anymore. I told him I was shy. Which is part of the truth.

He asked me what I was doing that night and if I'd like to hang out. We went and got coffee later. He doesn't drink at all. (Awkward!) But he is really sexy. And speaking of sexy, I think he's got some weird hang ups about sex. Apparently Egyptian women are virgins until they get married. And they still practice female circumcision there! Horrifying. He genuinely seems like a sweet guy, not a horrible misogonystic, woman-oppressor (as many Muslim men are believed to be by western women) but he definitely seems conflicted about sex.

The other day, after several dates, he came over to my house. I offered him tea and put on a movie. After kissing me passionately and dragging me to my bedroom to rip off my shirt, he abruptly asked me if I wanted to finish my tea. We went back to the living room to finish our tea. He started kissing me again. Then he paused and started looking off into space. I asked him what was wrong, he suddenly said he had to go and meet with his lawyer over some fines he had. His ambivalence didn't surprise me. I told him no problem, he should go. Once again he started kissing me and trying to pull my pants off. He then suggested we arm wrestle - he using only two fingers to compensate for being stronger than me. If I won he would stay. By this point, I was over it, I had accepted that he was going to go. We arm wrested, he with his two fingers against my hand and he won. He then suggested a rematch - only one finger against my whole hand. He seemed to be vacillating as to whether he should stay or go. I already suspected that if we hooked up he would freak out and leave. So I sent him on his way.

The next morning he called. I didn't answer. But today, under some crazy compulsion, I had to stop by again to say hi. He greeted me with friendliness and openness. His cousin was there and he introduced us.

Why do we play these games? Why are men and women so bewildered by one another? I know the whole thing is a horrible idea and yet I keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again. There is something about the exotic thrill of foreign lands and foreign men. Their 'strange' customs and ways excite me, challenge me. Something about the smell and touch of their skin is enticing. I know this is futile. That my romanticism is overly optimistic at best and objectifying and ignorant at its worst. And yet I must follow my foolish impulses.

Carnival of Sadness

I happen to LOVE depressing movies. The best thing is to go see them alone. There are 3 reasons for this: one - so I can smuggle in food like burritos and sit in a dark corner in the very last row masticating my food in peace (and not eating the dreaded movie popcorn with fake butter - I hate that shit, it doesn't even tempt me!), two - so I can cry with abandon - mascara running down my face, a misty and tragic look in my eyes, and three - so I can devolve into a dream-like reality after watching the movie and walk around for the next hour feeling like everything is surreal, reflecting on the movie. I never have to deal with anyone turning to me preemptively, just after the credits start rolling, interrogating - 'So, what do you think'? Movies put me in a stupor, entrance me, I forget all about myself and my petty, re-occuring issues. Its nothing short of liberation.

Tonight I saw 'Biutiful' an extremely dark and depressing film set in Barcelona by the director of Amores Perros (one of my favorite films). It was sad as hell. In fact I had to go get a drink afterwards. Alone. At a bar close to my house. I sat there drinking a cheap beer and a shot - $5 for both, the beer was actually good, its made in Upstate NY- a bleak and lonely place, if ever there was one. But the truth is feeling bad makes me feel good sometimes. The bartender was playing Mazzy Star and old Motown. I was feeling lucky to live in such a free world that I can sit alone at a bar pontificating by myself - as a single woman, and no one bats an eye. I was also simultaneously cursing my independence - wishing I was with someone who loved me. Someone who I could talk about the cruelty of fate with, discuss how the immigrants in the movie struggled, discuss the unfairness of the world, the struggle to find meaning in anything.

The protagonist in the movie was dying of cancer. I wonder what would matter to me if I were dying. What is left that means anything?!

Wow. This is getting depressing. I didn't mean it that way. Life is just complicated. For all of us.