a quiet saturday evening at the hovel house. i'm officially through with vacation and am turning into a vegetable after a productive week with my parents in rural pa. we had good father-daughter time with my dad teaching me how to use a table saw and assemble a piece of furniture: my new bookshelf, which i did indeed carry home flatpacked on the train. even though i don't get down with new year's resolutions (arbitrary and doomed to failure), living with my folks again for a week was timely in terms of reabsorbing old lessons that i hope to incorporate into my adult life. now retired and with a chunk of their savings irretrievably lost in the market crash, they live more frugally than ever, but with class. my father works on building projects around the house and what he can't make they buy second-hand. he built a cold cellar under the porch where they store apples and potatoes, available dirt cheap and of high quality locally while in season. they throw away very little, composting kitchen scraps, mending clothes and turning the unsalvageable into rags for cleaning. i'm trying to plan out how to incorporate that lifestyle into my home here, much more difficult because there are several of us with different schedules and priorities.
my perpetual resolution: increase my organization. make schedules, make plans, keep a budget. so far this plan is not off to a great start in '09, but the year is young.

my roommate jon has been converting his parents' old family videos to digital. it kind of hurts my heart to watch them. they are mostly filmed and narrated by his dad, trying to catch snippets of his younger children- tess's 1st birthday, jon's first painting. they are all shaky and grainy, zooming in and out in strange places. it's really beautiful, but it pains me to see them for some reason. something in the way the children are so themselves and unrestrained, and the wonder and surprise and pride in jon's dad's voice as he talks behind the camera. i think seeing things that are closed off makes me sad, the door shut on the past, and the videos disturb me like out-of-date calendars. fiction isn't like that- stories exist across time, like the aliens in slaughterhouse five. but watching old videos of real people, as the possibilities and potentionals of their lives inexorably narrow down to one particular path of events, that makes me sad.
i wish my parents had gotten some videos of us as children. they took pictures like there was no tomorrow, but didn't go in for video. there are just a few isolated audio recordings my dad made. he played one for my brother and me when they were packing everything up to sell the house. my brother is talking and telling his little stories, and my dad tries to coax a sentence or two out of me. something about how i slipped in the kitchen and hurt my lip, and my dad makes a joke about how he got the recording so he couldn't be prosecuted for child abuse. there's no one around to get the joke, however, just my dad and two small children and the tape recorder.

i'm too excited to sleep because i actually managed to pull off my elaborate costume idea. in brief, the roomies and i decided to do critical mass for halloween this year, and i wanted my costume to incorporate the bike. we had a thrilling and disturbing emu encounter in the country at the end of summer (they look at you like the raptors in jurassic park while making booming noises in their chests) so emu it was. i whipped out an american-apparel-style dress from an old sheet and used the scraps to make a long tail which drapes over a cardboard box duct-taped to my bike platform. emu feathers look like woolly grey yarn, which i possess in abundance, so i hand-sewed little hanks of yarn all over the tail. barring catastrophic costume failure (like, oh, catching my tail in my spokes) it should be a screaming good time with the bicycle activists. i'm yearning for it. a combination of knee tweaks and twinges (first one knee, then the other, then both) and repeated flats kept me grounded on and off for a couple weeks, which gave me the opportunity to finally start reading a book on bike messengers donated by this blog's cally correspondent. reading about bike messengers while riding to work on the subway is the mental equivalent of taking uppers with downers. i gotta get back on the bike before i wear my teeth down to nubs.

what can i say? i'm excited about the direction our government is going in for the first time since i lost the blind patriotism of my childhood (could it be that we're interested in kuwait because of THE OIL THERE?). i wasn't the only person at the bar tonight close to tears when obama stood up for a woman's right to choose.
this is the person i want to represent me.

the new york times keeps telling me that the world is ending- i sign in and see plummeting bar graphs with terminology that i don't understand. sam tried to explain what was going on to me one night when i was drunk and i just kept nodding off. i'm educated and intelligent and i live in new york city, but i don't understand. last month i couldn't imagine being able to buy a home, and today that hasn't changed. the bank that holds my savings is wavering between two new masters, but my money is guaranteed by the government.
this ignorance is, well, ignorance, and it's dangerous i know, but it's a strain for me to think of how my life will change as a result. the times is still running asinine stories on fashion and at work we discuss cover choices for books we never liked in the first place.
life goes on. life is actually pretty good right now. the snake hadn't eaten in over six months, but once i took him out i discovered why. he wrapped around me in icy coils. the old heating pad isn't quite as toasty as it used to be. i let him leach my warmth while i cleaned out scraps of skin and old blood from his cage, and then i put him in a warm bath. by the next day he was ready to eat again, and i feel like amid all the uncertainty of the past month something was working right.
another long ride on sunday also helped with clearing the cobwebs out of my brain. it was a privilege to race around manhattan island at top speed in pouring icy rain with a thousand insane cyclists, although it was a bit of a strain to appreciate that at the time. the sense of amazement and freedom is what stuck with me, though, while the memory of being freezing cold and out of breath is already distant. i love my new hobby. i would say that cycling must make you a better person if i didn't shake my head at reckless assholes on bikes every day, but i think it has made me a better person. i'm happier, and i can see my happiness reflected in all the people i interact with. the people i bike with are good people, too. unfortunately i'm grounded again for an indeterminate period of time because my knee doesn't like the cycling as much as i do.

so on sunday i rode my first century. talk about seeing a different view of new york. unfortunately, my sense of geography is so poor that i cannot express with any accuracy the different places we went. this much i know:

3 boroughs
4 bridges (including three new ones for me: the triborough, roosevelt island and ward's island)
100 miles (give or take)
13 hours

i enjoyed most of it, even the part where sam called to wake me up at the time i was supposed to be meeting everyone (5:50 am) and i had to throw on clothes, pump up the bike and run out the door, hung over and cussing up a storm.

there's so much to say about it that i'm not going to say, and so many beautiful sights that i had no time to take pictures of. it was all about doing it and being there, and when i was done i felt better than i had in a long time, almost out of recent memory. some of my sparkle's back.

already i'm thinking about the next one.

i'm staying up late to write this while i give the bread a chance to cool. there's a big family event this weekend and i volunteered to make some herb bread. the recipe in the mennonite cookbook called for sauteed onions, parsley, dill and thyme, but only whole wheat flour. next time i'll modify it to add a sponge rising time before adding the savory ingredients and i'll switch in some all-purpose flour. fresh out of the oven it smells delectable, but it never did quite rise and i suspect i'm going to end up with savory bricks all told. at least it's for family, so i won't get any shit for it from them.

sleeping time.

it was full dark when i rode home from the ladies' bike maintenance workshop. while it was my second class, it was the first time i realized the workshops take place in the basement of the legendary abc no rio. the space is tiny, the bathroom is disgusting and unlit and a giant rat skulked across the floor during our class, but it's enough. i like how all you need is someone who knows what they're talking about, a bike, a few parts and some interested parties to put on the classes. i go to the ladies only class to avoid male bike machismo and the group is surprisingly diverse. well, mostly white, but very diverse in terms of age and income, why we ride, why we want to learn how our bikes work. i had a similar experience when i went on the coney island ride, which i may or may not have written about already. i expected the group to be mostly dirty anarchists but there were all types and all bikes. back in the basement we learned about brakes- different types of brakes, how they work and how to adjust them. the laid-back instructor encouraged us to give it a try on one of the bikes in the basement, so we all gathered around a girl with ratty red dredlocks who nervously cranked on one of the bolts until it snapped in two. note: do not over tighten bolt. i learned that my bike has mountain bike cables and v-brakes. i learned why stephanie's brakes squeal. technically i understand how to fix it, but i don't quite dare to bust in on her bike like a bull in a china shop.
afterwards i rode home over the williamsburg bridge. the moon was big and right before me. it was quiet but the bridge was full of other bikers flashing their little red butt-lights. every time i bike over a new york bridge at night i'm struck by how true the clichés of new york as an overwhelming experience of lights are. most nights i'd trade it for stars, but man is it impressive.

so i spent labor day weekend somewhere out past carbondale, pennsylvania. my mother was hoping i would spend it in cape cod with my parents and grandparents, and the disappointment in her voice led me to have guilt dreams for the next two nights. i remember one in which i was beachcombing on the shore like we used to do as children, except with way more exotic animals. and tori amos. i don't know why she was in my dream, although i do remember that when my mom was working with her sister she told me they spoke every night, which makes tori a way more better sister than i am a daughter.
but one of the rewards of going to the cabins is that when you're there you are really fucking there, so i had to suck it up and be glad to be there. which i really actually was. it could have been awkward to be out there alone with a couple, later on with jon's parents as well, so two couples, but stephanie likes to surround herself with people as much as possible while jon is a loner type, and anyway i've been living with them for more than three years now. it worked out all right, and it was good to have the time with them. i finally worked up the nerve to tell stephanie that i would like to buy food with them, which is the biggest social commitment i've walked into willingly since moving in with them. we had a house meeting tonight about buying food collectively, i found a health food store with a bulk section, we made a shopping list together and just like that it's done. for better or worse. the groceries will be delivered tomorrow. stephanie and i will go through my cabinet and redistribute my stores. i have this habit of hoarding, where i like to think of getting things and putting them away for future use, like permanent resources. i know it's irrational. i have dried soup mix that was given to me six years ago. i have notes from my sophomore year math class carefully packed away in storage. i'm very possessive of things in this way. it's perhaps time i let go of that a little bit. the flour will also arrive tomorrow, at least, and i can make bread.
two nights in a row we got drunk with jon's parents and carried on. i asked them about how they met and became involved, how their children handled it. i told them i thought i might not find a partner like that and they said, how old are you? there's no way someone as awesome as you won't find someone. which is more flattering than reassuring. i keep asking myself whether it would matter and why. it's a waste of my energy to wonder whether i'll fall in love again- my worrying about it does not make it more likely to happen, and it's an activity that does no one any good. all the time i've spent wishing to be in love with someone (reciprocally, it should be said) i could have spent getting better grades in college, or studying the many books i've hoarded away for future use, or learning to play the dulcimer or volunteering. what a fucking waste.

today it felt like fall. summer in the morning, and then a storm blew through to clear out the heat and the humidity, so when i hopped on the bike at the end of the day it was nearly crisp. i biked up from soho on the path by the west side highway, past all the fools trying to get in the holland tunnel for their weekends outtatown. that path is a little aggro for me, with all the cars nearby and all the people getting their outtadoors on, walking all up in the bike lane and wandering about with their boyfriends, but it's a pure new york experience. i like remembering that i live on an island, actually smelling it, looking over to jersey, watching the helicopters land, seeing picnickers on the grass next to homeless people. i biked up into riverside park and over into central park, around and around to meet my brother at the met. the museum was more peaceful than usual, i guess the message hadn't caught on that they were open till nine. so we went through and talked and saw all the museum guards gearing up to get off their shifts. it was nice and chill, with the evening light starting to show through the curtained skylights. it's been long enough for me that they've rehung the modern section and different pieces abut one another than i'm used to. this is my idea of a good museum, that you get one sense and then you reevaluate it. museums as big as the met have more than half their collection in storage at any given time. they put some pieces away and pull others out, they move shit around. it's one thing to see a painting in isolation and another to see it with neighbors, then with different neighbors. i like it, and i like feeling at home with it. in a totally cheesy sense the met belongs to everyone, it's one of the privileges we pay for as part of our absurd cost of living in nyc. it's one of the reasons i live here. before i lived here the met was where i would go to kill time if i had to when i was in town. now that i live here it is in a pain in the ass part of town that i avoid whenever possible, but all of a sudden with the bike, it's a reward at the end of a pleasant trip. one of the most peaceful places in nyc is the temple of dendur with its moat and its skylights. watch the dusk fall there and in the turrell room at ps1 and you've had the best peacefulness new york has to offer.
i'm smoking again, i don't fully know why but it's part of this sensual impulse that i'm embracing rather than fighting, but i'm not writing this from the roof, there's something too primeval about the cold breeze up there that makes me catch up my belongings and hurry back into shelter. we saw a rainbow and a spectacular cloud display last sunday and now soon it will be chilly again and i'll be longing to be back up in the hudson valley.

i’’ve been craving sensory input like a madwoman lately. ice cream at work, meals of melted cheese and mustard, and now cigarettes again lest i become a giant lardball. thank goodness for the roof, where i’’m sitting in the dark with a beer letting the creamy breeze blow over me. the cycling is addictive; since i had it tweaked back into shape by the surly eastern european guy at the bike shop i feel more in control, pushing harder, slaloming around the manhole covers, taking the turn at the bottom of the bridge sharper than before. i love the bridge. i love bridges. i love being in transit.
on saturday kurt and i went to coney island. we meant to wait for good nick to do the fun stuff, but when we felt the first drops we decided to ride the cyclone before it was too late as someday soon it may be permanently too late. when the skies opened up they didn’’t shut down, just loaded us into the tiny wet seats and turned on the carnie lights. the ride pulled out as the thunder started. i looked down on a mile of deserted beach and kurt saw a lightning bolt touch the open water, then we roared down into the storm.
the comics i’ve been reading lately are fables and powers. after a long probation period in which i thought powers way maybe too over the top, too sexy too violent too cynical, i’ve swung firmly into liking it very much. the last issue had all these monologues delivered by characters who looked like real people and had no connection to the story talking about fakeness and the lies we live that overtake our lives, which chimes in with my second favorite vonnegut quote that we are who we pretend to be, so we should be careful about who we pretend to be. my favorite vonnegut quote is incidentally the best lie ever, the epitaph “everything was good and nothing hurt.” if i had internet access right now i’’d check that to make sure it was correct, but perhaps it’’s better this way to put it down just the way i remember it, without the benefit of fact-checking.