1000 books: Part 1

I went to Cincinnati last week for my mom’s birthday and to say goodbye to their house (the only house I grew up in!) before they move to Florida. Or, as they might say, I came home for my mom’s birthday and to go through the 7 bins of middle grade/YA books that had taken up residence in our friend’s storage unit, plus the two shelves of adult books in my old bedroom/the guest room, and a few other things…

(I never claimed to be good at this; also, I’ve long said that it’s much easier for me to just not acquire things than it is for me to get rid of things once acquired, a sentiment backed up in more quantitative terms by Kahneman and Tversky in The Undoing Project, which I’m almost finished reading. Don’t worry, that one is a library book and also has zero mass, because it’s a Kindle book! Oh…except that I somehow also ended up with the hardcover library edition. See, books are a problem area for me.)

I got rid of (aka put in piles for my mom to donate to a woman who’s collecting 700 books for a Halloween event…with the caveat that she might want to go through them first to make sure she isn’t giving an unsuspecting 7-year-old a Fear Street Holiday Special with the tag line “Happy holidays…you’re dead!!” <– really, is there anything that has more of a ring to it?) TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR BOOKS.

Which sounds like a great deal and something I should be very pleased with, and *I* am pretty pleased with myself, but I think my parents are more focused on the fact that there are still four bins of books plus a little tiny bit of spillover. They keep sending me information about air freight and storage units in NYC. That’s a problem for December Claire, who will be scrambling to find solutions (a friend has offered her Cincinnati basement, but…I have to come up with a more permanent plan at some point).

I took pictures of all of the books I got rid of, even the ones I didn’t remember, because that’s my crutch, and so that I could do a series pondering WHAT authors in the 80s and 90s were thinking. To be continued!

(I know at some point, probably in 7th grade, I had 800 books…so the final count may have been more like 1200, but I made an effort to only count the ones I was giving away and not the ones I was keeping so that I could proudly report to my parents the sheer number I’d managed to part with.)

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Around the Neighborhood(s)

On the Lower East Side the other day I saw a bearded dragon lizard riding on the back of a small dog. Their owner had been carrying the bearded dragon but paused when he saw us looking and asked if we wanted a picture (yes). He told us it was his birthday and that to celebrate he had bought $900 sneakers (the sneakers are in the picture; they are pink and shiny). The dog sort of shook the lizard off and he landed on the sidewalk, which startled and concerned me for a moment, but the dog was probably only ten inches off of the ground and the dragon seemed unfazed.

“Enjoy this humid New York day!” the man said as he made his way on with his two companions, though initially I heard it as “Enjoy this human New York Day!” and that seems equally likely even though I know it’s not what he said.

The bearded dragon stayed on his shoulder as he crossed Houston, but it inched its way down until it was nearly completely on his back. I don’t know how strong a bearded dragon’s grip is on the surface of a t-shirt, but he seemed to be a professional. At one point he let the dog off of its leash and I have to say it behaved in a pretty professional manner as well.

On the theme of neighborhood characters and mishearing, there’s a guy who often stands on my corner wearing camo shorts, a vest without a shirt but with significant metallic decoration, and occasionally a hat. I walk past him all the time, and one day when I was feeling particularly neighborly and jaunty, more human than humid, I must have made eye contact and given him a nod of recognition. He either said, “Hey buddy!” or “Hey dummy!” so I suppose I need more data on that.

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Where in the World

So, I tried to make the title of this post “Where in the World USA…” and apparently you can’t format a post title, which seems unnecessarily stingy.

My thought process behind the sous rature (sorry, THANKS HEIDEGGER (and if I’m being honest, without google, that would still say thanks Heidigger (now who invented the double–now triple–parenthetical??))) was that I’m always dreaming of other countries to visit (then feeling guilty at the prospect of flying too much; now this paragraph is vomitously self-referential) but rarely thinking about places in the US that I would like to see.

It’s a false allure, the idea of a place being so drastically different because of a passport stamp (which you often don’t even get anymore…when I was entering France from the UK recently the man at passport control sort of smirked at me and asked if I wanted a stamp, so I must have been projecting the aura of someone desperately hoarding evidence of travel)–or, it’s not false, but there are places within the US borders that are just as drastically different. I’ve never been to Yosemite, for one, or the Southwest. My only time technically in Texas was in the Houston airport. And though I’ve wanted to experience a Portland summer (because I associate those with 1) roses and 2) symphonies outdoors) since I was eleven, I’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest at all.

I stopped writing this for a few days and sort of lost the thread, though if I were sticking with signs and signified I might attempt a digression about semiotically checking off/crossing out regions once you’ve visited them. Anyway, that’s breadth, not depth…but if we consider smaller and smaller regions, moving from “Southwest” and “Mid-Atlantic” to proper states and then to cities, depth becomes more possible.

(I tutored a lot today. I think my brain is compromised, or to quote the Magnetic Fields, I’m not Sau-sure I know what this is).

 

 

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Bloop bloop bloop

As of last month, I’ve lived in New York City for 12 years (!). I never intended to stay permanently, but more than a decade here has made it tricky for me to imagine living elsewhere. The city never “gets me down,” per se, but while I used to think I would move simply to experience living in a different place, now I would need a compelling reason to leave. That reason may end up being $$, or the school systems, or a job, but it won’t be “just wanted something different.”

The past 24 hours have done a pretty spectacular job of making the continued case for NYC. Last night I dressed up as the Great Barrier Reef and went to a 50th birthday party at a nightclub in the Meatpacking District, where Vanilla Ice played while someone wearing a huge plush kangaroo suit leapt around (it was Australia themed, other than the Vanilla Ice part).

(I saw one other reef, two jars of vegemite, two mermaids, several Australian flags, three Quantas flight attendants, Bananas in Pyjamas, the Wiggles, and too many Steve Irwins, Mad Maxes, Crocodile Dundees, kangaroos, koalas, and sharks to keep track of.)

This morning I had coffee in Alphabet City, outside, during the course of which 1) we talked to an actor from Chicago whose small child tried to offer me the stick he was carrying (this was just post-instruction from his dad “Do not put that stick anywhere near that dog” that was tied to the fence, so the kid was technically following instructions); 2) a woman asked me to hold her dog’s leash while she went inside with her baby-in-stroller (I did think she was going to ask us to watch the baby, too) and I got to enjoy all of the comments and pets from the passersby by proxy.

After coffee we went to a community garden down the street and sat by a koi pond with several turtles standing guard on rocks, where we met 1) a guided group of German tourists; 2) a man with two small dogs that desperately wanted to vanquish one of the turtles, which seemed unfazed (I commented, “Poor turtle,” and the guy said, “Poor turtle nothing; we do this every day, so he knows they’re never going to get him. THEY don’t know that, though;” 3) A man and his three- or four-year-old son, who was dressed in a full-on Mario costume (complete with mustache), who explained to us that his son had just become obsessed with Mario but he didn’t want him playing on the phone all the time, so instead bought him a Mario costume and took him out to treat the world as his own personal Mario experience. The boy had certainly played SOME Mario, because he told his dad that he needed to step on the turtle (his dad said “you can touch him gently with your foot, but BE GENTLE” and the child actually complied perfectly, though the turtle dove into the pool indignantly). As they left the boy said, “We have to go find some mushrooms…so I can go bloop bloop bloop!” (motioning growing taller with his hand).

I really, really hope that at home the dad has constructed a set of cardboard boxes that hang from the ceiling that the lad can jump up and crush with his head. Ding!

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Internet detox

Once, many years ago, I told someone I was going to do a sugar fast, and they thought I meant I was only going to eat sugar.

So no, when I say “internet detox,” I do not mean that I’m trying to spend all of my time on the internet.

I’ve known for years that, since computers became part of my life (pretty late – age 13 – even if I’m old, it was late for my era) they’ve steadily eaten away at my hazy patches of uncategorized time. I can still pinpoint the time I spend doing yoga, playing harp, reading, sleeping, working, etc, but there are massive fields of hours – and also fragments of lost time – that go to the computer. And, really, to the internet.

The first step (I mean…other than recognizing it) is probably writing down all of the time I spend online. (My immediate thought here is “Ooh – I should buy a special fancy notebook for this!” but that’s probably a) procrastination; b) jealousy over my students’ new school supplies.) AND THEN? Trying to repurpose that time for something that is, at the least, more intentional than reading about blogs on reddit or scrolling through gymnastics message boards.

In part, if I can spend more of my subway and at-home time reading, I think I’ll feel better. If I can spend it WRITING, I’ll really feel better. And I’ll also feel justified in spending time on things like paring down both my physical possessions and my digital belongings.

I could also feel better about setting aside time to do things like listen to my Discover Weekly playlist all the way through (necessary, no; I’m kind of a completionist, though, which is why having too many magazine subscriptions is dangerous for me and also why I’m still reading a book that I find pretty boring–and, until I finish it, I can’t take my Kindle off of airplane mode to download new ebooks, because this one is overdue at the library…I know, the horror and trauma) or searching for a program with which to draw the various ideas for graphic design/cartoons that I have kicking around my brain.

 

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I saw the sign

If I have a (very) limited time in a city, I favor three things: grocery stores, signage, and cobblestone streets. Amsterdam is no Prague or Lisbon when it comes to magical alleyways, but the signs and the supermarket did not disappoint. A seven-hour layover equates to as much walking + as much eating as possible.

Pictures below – click through for more signage:

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Space

September starts and many people ask, “Where does the time go?”

I ask that question too, of course, but I’ve also been asking lately, “Where does MY time go?”

(so self-centered)

I suspect that most of it gets sucked into the computer, which functions much like a high-powered vortex fan. I don’t know if vortex really works as an adjective in this case, or if I’m conflating natural phenomena and the fan brand name vornado.

When I think about how I could better spend my time, I fall into the trap of “if I cleaned my room and got everything in order, THEN I could work” – to such a degree that I find myself thinking “if I pared down my possessions, they would both be easier to keep clean AND there would be fewer to take up mental space…” which is when you know you’re in trouble.

In actuality, the physical possessions that fill my room are only a convenient distraction, and the real drain on mental space is that which takes up (almost) no physical space at all – the thousands of pictures, text messages (in PDF form, at that), and word documents I have on my computer.

For one thing, there are too many. It’s a trope but also a truism that digital cameras have facilitated a lack of discretion: pixels aren’t expensive, and you don’t have to choose your shots carefully, let alone delete duplicates or reduce your vacation pictures to only the very best.

For another thing, they’re spread out in different configurations across my computer, external hard drive, Google drive, dropbox, probably iCloud…I didn’t mean for it to be that way, but you run out of space on one thing and next thing you know you’re buying a storage unit. I actually have PLENTY of space on Dropbox, but I can’t get my iPhone to stop syncing when I connect it to my computer, so things are always uploading into whatever the Macbook photo program is called…and that’s why I’m constantly having to figure out why my hard drive is full again and where the perpetrators have gathered.

But then, maybe if I just got rid of enough odds and ends that I could thoroughly dust my room, all of my time-management problems would be solved!

 

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Overheard on Vacation

“Mum, when you’re the queen, are you able to get broke?”

“Asymptotically, the lost landscape doesn’t look glassy at all.”

(upon checking for accuracy – of speech, not physics – it was actually the LOSS landscape)

I wish I could say I overheard these in the same place, but they were collected from different countries and demographics, i.e. England vs. France and small child vs. physicist.

I’m at this physics conference next to a Corsican beach and while all of the physicists and dual-specialty professors are inside hearing a lecture, I’m sitting under a massive tree outside, looking at the ocean while doing a Duolingo lesson that’s teaching me to say things like “What is the weight of the particle?” in Russian.

(In a separate lesson, it also gave me the practice sentence of “The monitor is very dirty” which is just as accurate as one of its other offerings, “An atom of oxygen is sixteen times heavier than an atom of hydrogen.”)

When I’m not eavesdropping and mining high-level theoretical physics for metaphor, I’m mostly thinking about Ferrante, even though I’m not in Naples and technically this is France, not Italy.

Tomorrow I hope to overhear something else worthy of inclusion while in Amsterdam or Iceland, because I have two layovers – Schiphol for 7.5 hours, KEF for just over an hour – and certainly plan to leave my suitcase at the airport in Amsterdam while I go have a walk along a canal. Not that I had the option of a direct flight back to NYC from Corsica, but I did choose the longer available layover to sit between my Corsica – Amsterdam flight and Amsterdam – Reykjavik. If I have greater time than necessary to walk to a new gate without fear of missing my next flight, I would much rather have even more time so I can leave the airport and explore.

I don’t know what percent of people would count my approx. five full hours in Amsterdam as “having been to the Netherlands,” but it will fit my personal requirements of 1) leaving the airport (OBVIOUSLY – I’ve been in Schiphol before but an airport isn’t a country) and 2) having enough time to see/buy something. I’ve only done this a couple times (at least with countries I otherwise haven’t been to – my shortest “leave the airport and run around” layover was about 4 hours in Beijing (IN WINTER, on my way home from Thailand, aka sans jacket and feeling in my fingers and toes), but I’d already been to China and Beijing years before). The others were…Portugal, but that was 22 hours and I spent the night in a hotel, so I don’t think anyone would question that; Budapest, where I had a 9-hour layover (if you want to be technical, I was only in Pest); Bangladesh, where I didn’t get to see much in the 12 or so hours but did make it to a grocery store (favorite item: Lays potato chips in “American – SALT” flavor) and nearly to a hospital (probably, someone (not me) should have had stitches, but sometimes you slap a bandaid on and hope for the best); and Fiji, where I think I spent about 8 hours on a lawn chair next to a hotel pool. That’s the weakest one, certainly. Oh – and Canada, for about 20 hours, but I guess I didn’t technically leave the airport at all and anyway I’ve been to Canada a few times before (…intentionally).

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London Calling

I stayed in a very comfortable hotel for seven nights (er…it was supposed to be seven nights, but ended up being more like five and a half, since I arrived 24 hours late and on my final night there I left at 3:15 am) while I taught SAT/ACT boot camp and I think I gave them some odd impressions on which to build a character sketch of me while I was there.

First, I arrived so tired – not even jet-lagged, because my entire circadian rhythm was so scrambled jet leg just got folded into it and disappeared) and out of it that when they asked if I was there for work or pleasure my brain short-circuited a bit and I gave the same answer I’d given customs – “Vacation!” Now – I don’t think there was actually anything objectionable about me teaching an SAT course in London without a work visa, given that my employer is in the US/I’m an independent contractor/my pay was all coming from the US even though I was physically in London, and considering that I often have students in other countries (including the UK) via Skype…but it seemed like a lot to go into at customs (and the last time I went through UK customs was almost a decade ago and they were highly suspicious because I didn’t know the address of the hotel I was staying at, so I don’t have a great track record here…).

Anyway, I gave the hotel the impression that I was “on holiday,” which didn’t do much to explain the two giant packages of books that were delivered to my room ahead of me (and which I then struggled with mightily trying to get them into the elevator and then an Uber to take them to the school…). Subsequently, my colleague had an enormous plant delivered to my hotel room for my co-teacher (no one at reception mentioned this – I just returned to my room one afternoon and there it was, taking up most of the table). Also, I needed to avail myself rather heavily of the hotel printer, and my overactive guilt/fear of being scolded led me to do this by stealth (the printer was, luckily, under a counter! But also directly across from reception!), even though my office manager had called the hotel ahead and asked about printing and they had responded that it was free and I could print as much as I liked!

These are all problems of my own making, is what I’m saying. Except the plant. And it was a pretty delightful companion the one night it stayed in the room with me.

I did manage to print a total of something like 24 full SAT/ACT practice tests (having to request paper from the front desk only once, before bringing my own (thanks to my co-teacher) after that to avoid drawing suspicion) before the printer started crying out for help and the replacement of M, Y, and C toners. I sweet-talked it through printing six of eight student reports before it went quietly into the good night.

So, am I making a good case for myself for a secondary career as a spy? I thought so.

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Planes…

So…maybe humans are evolving away from traveling huge distances.

As much as I would mourn that, I sometimes think it makes sense. Long-haul flights for short-term vacations are terrible for the environment. I’m as guilty as anyone and, while I don’t know that it’s necessary to give up travel completely, I wonder if it would make sense for flights to cost even more than they do now.

I say this as I remember back to 2004, when I flew round-trip to London for $300 (against doctor’s orders–I had mono–because $300! I couldn’t lose that!). And I say it from a hotel in Toronto, where I’ve washed up after my flight from LGA was delayed (ON the runway, where there was no food and we weren’t allowed to use the bathroom for most of that time) more than 2.5 hours and I landed 10 minutes before my connecting flight departed for London.

(without me, obviously)

La Guardia is…inefficient, but this has been a pretty treacherous week for travel in general because of the weather. I was supposed to go to California last Saturday…but the flight was canceled because of the thunderstorms and the next available flight was on Monday–it would have gotten us to California Monday at 8 pm. And our flight back was Tuesday at 4 pm. So we just didn’t go. Today’s delay actually wasn’t due to thunderstorms, but about two hours after we were supposed to leave it DID start storming. We were able to take off anyway, and the very Canadian-stereotypical flight attendant announced, “I’ve come to the understanding that some of you might be frustrated. Glass half full perspective: we ARE going to get to Toronto!”

(at least, that sounded cliched-positive until I learned that most of the people on my flight were supposed to fly to Toronto LAST night, but…their flight was canceled because of the torrential rain and thunderstorms)

Unfortunately, it would have been better for me to have just gotten stuck in NYC, because then I could have gone home instead of to the airport hotel, and I probably could have gotten to London faster on a direct flight leaving tomorrow morning or afternoon. But because I made it to Toronto, my only option on this airline is 24 hours and 5 minutes (RANDOM) after my scheduled flight.

My dad worked in logistics for Proctor and Gamble. As a child, I didn’t fully understand what he actually did. Now I’m gleaning more insight. And while I understand the logistics of a particular airline only operating a particular flight once a day, and can reckon with that, I wish that other elements could be different–particularly, the way that everyone disavows all knowledge of ANYTHING (it would do away with a giant percentage of anxiety if the flight attendants could give you any info about your connecting flight and your chances of getting on it, where to go to make that happen most quickly, whether you and other passengers with possible connections (in spite of the delay) might be able to get off the plane first…). And I don’t have reason to doubt that the flight attendants DON’T have that info, but…why don’t they? They tell you, instead, that as soon as you get off the plane you’ll be able to speak to the airline’s customer service desk. That’s…about 0.6 miles and one GOING THROUGH CUSTOMS inaccurate.

Why do you have to go through customs if you’re just getting on a connecting flight? I know you don’t HAVE to, because not every airport makes you! LAX does, which is highly unpleasant, and apparently YYZ does too. It leads to awkward encounters like the customs agent asking, “And what will you be doing in Canada?” and the subsequent fight not to shout “I’M TRYING TO LEAVE” or “I AM NOT TRYING TO BE IN CANADA BUT NO ONE WILL TALK TO ME.”

My original train (HA) of thought–as much as it existed by 10 pm–was that it might be better if flights were more expensive but also more efficient and if airlines could use the additional funds to improve recourse for travelers when delays happen (like comping hotel rooms for passengers who are stranded). I don’t know that I actually want that–not trying to make it more financially difficult for people to fly–but it did seem like the whole industry was overburdened. Though maybe that’s mostly La Guardia.

I’m in London now but I’m still jet lagged. Hence my undigested thoughts!

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