NYE at the Cloisters

Yesterday, everything I did—going to the Met museum (bazillions of people in the foyer and standing in front of the Rembrandts...the nerve!), going to the Co-op for groceries (waiting in line for 35 minutes to check out...what in god's name does everyone need to buy?), going on a quest for the elusive pair of low-heeled black boots with no tassles or fur (trading elbows with sale-crazed shoppers...there's a recession, folks!)—was a madhouse. For the first time in my short time in NYC, I ended the day wanting people to get the eff out of my face. It was bound to happen, right?

So today, back to my patient Western self, I went to what must be one of the most peaceful places in the city: The Cloisters.


Built by Rockefeller Jr. in the 1930's, it's home to some amazing Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture—some of which is incorporated into the building. The most incredible: the Unicorn Tapestries. I'd seen them before, on a trip to New York while I was in college, but I'd forgotten just how stunning they are. There are over 100 different plants represented in the weaving, along with incredibly detailed faces, buildings, animals, drapery, and—of course—unicorns. The series (they're not positive how they all fit together) tells a loose story about mankind killing a beautiful creature. Hmm, sounds familiar....

The Pontaut Chapter House:


Looking out at winter:


The new snow made it even more tranquil than usual. The whole space has a reverent feel to it, which was pretty much the opposite of the main floor of Macy's. It made me very thankful.




So it's New Year's Eve. And there's no way in hell I'm going near Times Square! First of all, it's about 30 degrees with 30-mph winds. Second, I got invited to a salsa-dancing potluck party in the East Village, which sounds much more fun and random than huddling with a million huddled masses waiting for the ball to drop. I'll stop by another shindig for a quick glass of champagne and then go make a tool out of myself trying to dance. There's gotta be someone out there who wants his foot stomped on....

Anyway, I got my dose of the mob mentality yesterday. I'm going to ring in 2009 with some old and new friends (like the person who's hosting the party, for instance, whom I haven't met!). Trade the reverence I found at the Cloisters for some irreverence. Have a wonderful night, everyone, and here's to another great year.

Opera on the Cheap (my favorite kind!)

What would you do to see an opera? Yesterday, I found out what I would do: Wait for four hours in a frigid hallway underneath the Metropolitan Opera House for the chance to buy two orchestra-level seats (usually something like $150) for 20 bucks a piece.


Thanks to a lady named Agnes Varis (who works in pharmaceuticals and also went to Brooklyn College!), the riff-raff can get primo seats to performances on Monday through Thursday nights. Agnes and her hubby buy 200 tickets at full price, then release them at 6 pm, two hours before the show begins. The catch? People start lining up FOUR hours ahead of that, at 2 pm, for the chance at a deal. I decided I needed to try this at least once: I'm on break, it's between Christmas and New Year's, I have some time, and I love the Met.

The scene: Cold. Colder than outside, which is cold. The floor is so chilling that it's warmer to stand up, only there's no way I want to stand for four hours. So sit I do. Ass cold. In back of me are two students, one from Santa Barbara and one from NYC (who does this every WEEK). Two hours into it, they get me an espresso. We chit-chat. In front of me are a couple people from Montreal, reading guidebooks. The lighting is dim. It's a hallway, but feels like a parking garage. (I think they want to hide us desperate tightwads out of sight.) I read some of my new book, The Lazarus Project by Alexander Hemon (good, so far). Listen to Santogold. Shift my weight. Stand up. Sit down. Brr. There's a certain solidarity down here: people laughing and steeled, this is ridiculous—but I'm not giving up my place in line for anything.

At 5, a woman hands us surveys: How did you hear about the Met? Would you do this again? (Yes, everyone is thinking, it's already 5 and it wasn't that bad!)

At 5:30, they herd us inside and upstairs (the relief of warmth!), where we wait another half-hour. When I finally slap down my $40 for two tickets, it's absolutely triumphant. Felt a bit like Hands on a Hardbody.

Inside:
(after I took this photo, I was scolded by a 90-year-old usher)


Outside:


I invited my friend Chris, and it was his very first opera (unlike me, with a mom who started dragging me to operas when I was 6 years old, which meant years later, many years later, I started dragging other people). Right—I haven't even mentioned which one. La Bohene. Poor poets and writers living in an attic, agonizing over their work, falling in love, drinking and flirting too much, getting jealous, becoming deathly ill. As a poor writer (me) with a much-less-poor writer (Chris) both living in small apartments and dreaming of being artists, I think we related to the story a little bit (at least the agonizing part). The staging was amazing (real horses and donkeys, hundreds of people at a market, snowy parks, crooked garrots). And even though operas are melodramatic, they linger on the most important things. You know: Meet someone. Sing a song together, about rainbows in the eyes and tremblings in the heart and all those things we claim are cheesy but actually just wish we had. Fall in love five minutes later. Sing again.

Sounds pretty good to me.

Snow in Seattle

It rarely happens, and when it does, it rarely sticks around for more than a day. But here in the NW, we're in the middle of a cold streak—and it's a beautiful thing. No driving, just bundling up and walking...or sitting by the fire and reading...with no chance to stress out about the holidays. Not that I ever really do! It's just nice to be home with the fam. My bro got delayed on the way out of Boston and we're crossing our fingers that he shows up tonight.

On the Burke-Gilman trail (with a skier behind—can't think of the last time I saw this in Seattle)....



Ev and Dad....

I should be used to snow by now, but not surrounding the house where I grew up. It reminds me of snow days, waking up giddy, listening to the radio, and then running out the door to find my friends. I think everyone needs more snow days.

The porch and the bird feeder (the birds have been very dedicated to us lately)....

The house, which hardly ever looks like this. 

The sun's already going down, and there's a carrot cake in the oven for my dad's birthday, and my mom and I are about to start decorating the tree. (Yes, we're kinda late....like I said, we don't get too stressed out about Christmas.) So I better run. Here we go again.

School's Out!

And it feels damn good. On Wednesday night, Amy Hempel brought my Crafts class ("crafts" meaning the craft of writing; "class" meaning we spent every Wednesday during the semester sitting around and sharing and talking about writing) to the Happy Ending (a place with carpeted walls—very lounge-y) to see a great evening of reading and music. Rick Moody and the Wingdale Community Singers did a couple numbers—some of which were subversive takes on the usual Christmas carols. Then Mary Gaitskill and A.M. Homes read new stories, both of which were perceptive, sad, funny, and so good. It was an inspiring night, and a great way to end the semester.

The inspiration thing: Sometimes it's inspiring to hear accomplished writers read. And sometimes I walk away thinking, I'll never be able to do that. They make it look so easy. Good ol' self-defeating talk, I know. On Wednesday, I was more inspired than intimidated, because last week I wrote a story that actually sort of made sense. Everyone in my class has been asking each other, "So, it's the end of the semester....have you learned anything?"

A few things I've learned:
1) I know I've read a bunch of books and writers I never had before. A couple:
• Steve Erickson
• Shelley Jackson
• Walter Abish
• Barry Hannah
• Jo Ann Beard
• Robert Coover
2) I know I'm writing more than I was writing before, fiction-wise. As in, I wrote three short stories as opposed to the none I would have written had I not been in school.
3) I know that deadlines are a good thing.
4) I know a lot more about theories relating to teaching freshman composition, and people I'd never heard of before (Bartholomae, Elbow, Berlin, Sommers, Bean). Where it'll lead, I'm not sure: As with everything and everywhere else, CUNY is making budget cuts in the spring, which might mean no T.A. position for yours truly.
5) I know I have a lot more to learn, and I'll never really know how to do this.
6) I guess that's the beauty of it, no? Writing: a constant struggle with just enough moments of epiphany to keep me coming back for more.

Rick Moody Talks to Tom Wolfe...

...and leaves me wondering: How must it feel to write something that endures for 40 years—and manages to fill a theater with fans on its anniversary? Tonight, at Symphony Space, I got to hear a conversation about The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, published four decades ago. An actor read an excerpt from the book (the part where they find the bus, then drive it near a forest fire, and get pulled over by a befuddled cop), and then the two authors chatted. Tom Wolfe wore a white suit, black-and-white striped shirt, black tie, black and white shoes, and white socks with black stirrups (that remind me of the socks I had to wear when I played one season of softball in high school). The two of them covered everything from astronauts to LSD to the blogosphere (TW is not a fan—hah!), journalism, inspiration, and what it was like to ride on that bus for eight weeks. It was an inspirational night. One of the funniest things Wolfe said about modern fiction these days: It's too realistic. Maybe nonfiction is the way to be really provocative and meaningful.

If I can write something (fictional) that endures beyond my weekly writing workshop and is read by more than my classmates (who are required to read it) and my friends (whom I foist it upon), I'll be happy. Anything beyond that would be plain amazing!

Can't even comprehend 40 years. Maybe I need an outfit—a la the white suit—to turn into a caricature of myself, and then I'll be larger than life!

Or maybe not....

Booooring...

Boring: That's me. At least lately.

This has been my view for the last few days. We've spent a couple recent Friday and Saturday nights in: my laptop and I. My continuous whirlwind exploration of New York has come to a grinding, squealing, 3-train-braking-ouch-my-ears halt—for a brief moment. Blame it on the end of the semester: final stories and papers to write, procrastination that has come to bite me in the ass, a little bit of burnout. (I've come to discover that while all writing can be hard work, fiction ALWAYS seems to be hard work, and often I don't think I'm necessarily getting any better at it. Yet I flounder away. Thanks, deadlines!) I have to admit, I love the feeling of saying "the end of the semester." It's been so long since I've been in school. And it's so great to be a student. Don't even ask the last time I actually existed in the world of terms and breaks—I'm, like, one of the old fogies in my class. I just have to say that it's good to be here.

Back to fiction being hard work. I had to turn in a story for my workshop yesterday. What started as a little sketch of a drunk couple leaving a party turned into a short saga about cheating, stillbirth, car accidents, icy roads, hopelessness, resignation, escape, and acceptance. Or something like that (it hung together in my head, anyway). It's so weird where ideas come from, or when they come. You look at the screen or the page and tell yourself, OK, start writing. And from nowhere these characters present themselves. Then you make them do things that don't always make sense. Then you have to figure out a point to the whole thing. That's if it's a good day.

On a not-so-good day, you get coffee or do yoga or make soup or see a movie or go to a museum or clean the house or not, or run or read or sleep or eat, then eat again, then repeat, anything to avoid the way the screen stares at you, indicting you for your incompetence and lack of inspiration. Writing: It does wonders for your self-esteem!

But the semester (let me savor the word again) is coming to a close. That means drinking wine at professors' houses, putting books back on shelves (and giving this laptop a break), going to Friday night at the Met (it's open until 9 pm), seeing Don Giovanni at the other Met (my mom told me that Erwin Schrott, who sings the lead, is apparently the man), attending my final training for the Community Word Project, catching Milk with Veronica (if only to see my classmate, J.F., on the big screen), and busing it to Boston to see my bro—and pick up all my ski stuff! I'm hatching a couple plans to get out West to the mountains. Museums and operas are great and all, but I could use a little powder in my life soon....

Back to my stare-down with the blank page.

Mexico City

(Megan, Maggie, Antonio, Kelly, me)

So this is supposed to be about Boulder and Brooklyn and Boulder to Brooklyn, but I just spent an amazing five days in Mexico City visiting my great friend Maggie. She's living there with her husband, Antonio, in a beautiful colonial neighborhood called Coyoacan. We had a Thanksgiving with 14 people, including Antonio's old friend from Sydney, Dwayne; Maggie's friend from high school in San Fran, Kelly; my friend Megan, who's an atmospheric chemist working in Mexico City for two years; some of Antonio's family and friends from university; four pies (two pumpkin, one apple, one pecan); two turkeys (one with achiote, one with rosemary); cranberry salad, mashed potatoes, chocolate-covered strawberries (as if we needed more dessert), chocolate cookies (as if we needed *more* dessert), and glasses and glasses of wine.

And while New York is big, Mexico City is BIG big: I've read 25 million. I've heard 22 million. OK, so the census says that NYC is 19,306,183—no small potatoes here. And there are parts of MC that are incredibly peaceful, like some of the squares in Coyoacan and San Angel. Even more peaceful than here in NYC. But still: when Maggie and I went to the Zocalo—the main square in the middle of the city—it was insane with people. They'd just installed the world's biggest ice-skating rink, erected a fake Christmas tree that seemed about 20 stories high, and trucked in real snow so people could sled and build snowmen in the 70-degree heat.


The only place I've seen a bigger crowd was in Times Square on election night! But it was so dynamic and colorful everywhere we went—food carts, bright buildings, street musicians, banners and lights, a wee bit of traffic (hah!), murals, and beautiful churches. So much long history here. I said to someone, "It makes New York feel like a village." That might be a bit of a stretch (or maybe I'm getting used to NY?), but like I said, it was BIG. And awesome.

We squeezed a lot into a short amount of time: catching up over tea that I brought down from Teany; going to a few great artisan and food markets; salsa dancing (I was SUCH a goddamn fool on the dance floor); mezcal drinking; pyramid climbing; pug playing (Maggie and Antonio have a puppy, Lola); walking walking walking; museum going; coffee cake eating (thanks, Megs!); and generally staying up too late, eating too much, and laughing a lot.

A little taste: