I posted the other day about a couple on the train and my dawning awareness of what they were doing. A few days later, another young couple sat near me (this time on a crowded train, and actually, the woman sat next to me and the guy kind of crouched on the floor) and noticed I was playing Candy Crush (NO SHAME). “Ooh, I wanna see what level she’s on!” I heard from within my colorful daze. “Hey, I’ll play your level if you play mine for me,” the woman said, “I can’t beat it!” Later, the man looked up from his own game, paused, and said, “You know, I think the Soda version is really all about the fish.” This couple, too, bid me a pleasant good night (and good luck, literally).

Sometimes on the train you hear conversations and think, “It would be cool to have that profession.” Other times, this:

Person A: “A guy had a stroke and started bleeding and they had to cut a hole in his neck.”

Person B: —

Person A: “A kid shit on the floor and I had to clean it up.”

Person A: “A kid threw up on the floor and I had to clean it up.”

Person A: “A girl puked in the sink, and I had to clean it up!”

Person B: !!

Person A: “A guy got in a fistfight over a pizza.”

And that is why you don’t work at Chuck E. Cheese if you can help it.

I was in the dressing room at yoga last week getting ready for class when I heard the other woman in there say, “That is a SKILL” because I had just put my sports bra on from the bottom up, by stepping into it. Finally, someone appreciates the skill that seventh-grade gym class begat!

And finally, I was on the train late one night with a bunch of people, including some very dapperly dressed guys, and as I was getting off I heard their argument, which began with:

“Your toiletries bag is four times the size of mine!”

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People have been talking to me in public more than usual. Especially young couples on the trains–why, I don’t know. Full moon?

I was taking the F home around 9 pm – the train was mostly empty, so the only people near me were a couple sitting across the car – when I started to hear murmurs and to get an unusual feeling…the feeling when you realize that the people across from you seem to be trying to guess what your name is. They were being pretty quiet but when you hear things like “…Lizzy?” followed by a long pause, some muffled consulting, and then “Andrea, no…” something about the conversation isn’t normal.

After “…Lizzy?” I looked up and met eyes with the guy of the couple, and I had really started to think I was right about what was going on, so I couldn’t help breaking into a huge smile. He did as well, and then when I looked back down at my book he whispered excitedly to his girlfriend and then said “Lizzy.” in a more declarative way.

I had to abandon my book. “Nope,” I said.

“Ah, ah, ahh….Mary?”

“Not even close.”

“Tell us the first letter, at least!”

“Hmm…Okay. It’s C.”

“C..C…Cynthia??”

By this point we were one stop away from mine, and they were still calling out things like “Carly? Carrie?” so I made a show of standing up to proclaim “You’re never going to get it, and the next one is my stop.”

“Nooooo!” the girl said, and actually kicked her feet. The train stopped and the doors opened, and the guy made as if he was going to get off the train to follow me. “We have to know!” he said.

“It’s Claire…have a good night.”

“Goodnight…Claire!”

(I found the whole interaction charming and uplifting but my roommates’ response was THAT IS CREEPY AF. People! So different.)

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There aren’t many books that I reread. Most of them are middle grade fiction or YA–The Changeling, The Mozart Season, Superfudge, numerous others. The only adult novels I can recall having read multiple times are Graham Swift’s Waterland, which I’ve probably read there times; Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, maybe just twice; and Into Thin Air. There are books that I want to reread, but…there are so many other books check off both “want to read” and “have not already read.” It’s not a fair fight.

It seems like people rewatch movies more often than they reread books, which makes sense from a time perspective; I haven’t really done that much either, though. Outside of the movies I watched repeatedly only as a child (Cool Runnings, the Rainbow Brite origin story), the movies I’ve seen most (and the only ones I can’t at least approximate a count for) are Clue, Princess Bride, and Everybody Rides the Carousel. I know I’ve seen Bladerunner, Me & You & Everyone We Know, and Something’s Got to Give (it was my comfort background movie when I lived in Bangkok and only got two TV channels, one of which turned into HBO Asia on the weekends) maybe three or four times each. Amelie and Event Horizon twice. Two by Jim Jarmusch twice each (The Limits of Control and Only Lovers Left Alive). Beyond that I can’t think of many more.

**Oh wait. Yes I can: Hocus Pocus. 

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The king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, died on Thursday. I wore yellow corduroy pants to remember him (yellow is his color, I believe because of the day of the week on which he was born). I lived in Thailand for a year after college, and during the first year I was back in the US I wore one of the King’s commemorative bracelets (kind of looked like a LiveStrong bracelet, but with Thai script–you could only buy them at the post office) most of the time. That was how I came to be friends with the owners of Absolute Bagels, the best bagels in Manhattan–my first week in NYC I walked in there and the woman behind the counter was wearing the same “long live the king” bracelet that I had on.

Every time I went to the movies in Thailand–which was ALL THE TIME, because unlike the UK and some other countries, they released American movies the same day that the US did (actually the day before, if you want to ponder time zones) and because movies were about $2.50–I stood, along with the rest of the audience, for a short movie about the king’s life. It was set to extremely emotional music and I think I literally cried, at least a sniffle, every single time. From an outsider’s perspective, the King seemed like a much more revered version of the British Monarchy–his powers weren’t codified and he didn’t run the government the way monarchs of some nations do, but the prime minister and the army listened to his advice. De facto rather than de jure ruling, which worked, mainly, because he was so beloved.

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I don’t actually have a nightstand. I have a fairly deep window sash, upon which live my lamp and probably some spiders, and I have a portable air conditioner that cautions “Do not place items on top of air conditioner,” upon which I compromise by only putting items on it when it’s not shuddering from overuse.

Generally, though, whatever book I’m currently reading is either in my purse or on top of my bed, and the books I’m also reading or am about to read or am going to read eventually are stacked in two piles next to my bed.

Deciding which books to read next falls on a number of factors, mainly 1) which is due back at the library next 2) can I renew that book or is it on hold 3) is it too heavy to be a subway book 4) what do I feel like reading. Sometimes I don’t take books with me when I go to pick up holds from the library, but then, absent of other books, I start the new library book while on the train, and that’s how I find myself in the middle of several at once.

Right now:

I just finished The Assistants by Camille Perri because it’s due in three days and is very zeitgeisty so there’s a long waiting list. I had a suspicion it wouldn’t take too long to read; next up in its stead is The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, which also can’t be renewed and is due imminently.

I’m in the middle/beginning of two nonfiction books: Jungle of Stone by William Carlsen, which my dad recommended and which I’ve been reading sideways and slowly when I go to bed because a) it’s too heavy for my purse and b) no one is waiting for it so I can continue to renew it. I’m about 70 pages into Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene (that one is also due and cannot renew, but I have ten days left to tackle it…)

As a side note, did Siddhartha Mukherjee become a father between writing The Emperor of All Maladies and this new one? Because it is already FULL of Dad Jokes. (“He couldn’t visualize whirled peas…” Mukherjee says of a non-Mendel scientist.)

I’m also technically in the middle of American Gods by Neil Gaiman, but I think I might abandon it. I read the first 200 pages last summer and then got bored and if I wanted to give it another go I would need to start over. I liked The Ocean at the End of the Lane but American Gods just never caught me.

The rest of the books lying in wait:

Pacific by Simon Winchester (also a Dad recommendation, also a library book, but not one that’s in danger of being recalled)

Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart (loaned to me)

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (also on loan)

A Strangeness in my Mind by Orhan Pamuk (given to me by a student’s parent)

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (found ON THE STREET, in perfect condition!)

Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel (friend and former classmate)

Man v. Nature by Diane Cook, (same!)

The Sellout by Paul Beatty (my prize from last year’s office book exchange)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (my prize from last year’s family book exchange)

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley (borrowed from my roommate)

The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum (borrowed from a friend)

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (borrowed from a different friend)

Yes, I do knock them over frequently. No, I’m not going to have room on my shelves for the ones that are mine. It’s okay. They like where they live.

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If I could choose a talent to wake up with one day it would be graphic design. What’s more fun than being supremely great at a never-ending game of “this thing looks like that other thing”? I have a few friends who are graphic designers and I’m always impressed by the balance of idea + execution.

But if I think about an alternate career path, I nearly always consider epidemiology. I doubt I’ll actually go back to school for an MPH or an MS, but sometimes I look at online courses…and infectious disease literature for the layperson constitutes about half of my nonfiction reading.

Last year I was listening to a podcast about rapid-onset OCD in children following strep throat (I grew up with OCD, but not the type that appears suddenly or is thought to be temporary after having been triggered by an infection) and the broadcaster referred to his doctor-guest as “a pioneer in the field of PANDAS” (PANDAS being the acronym for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections–I guess it’s not PANDASI because that’s less cuddle/more like something from Game of Thrones?).

A pioneer in a field of pandas! I immediately had the most vivid mental image of a tall puritan-style hat wending its way through a field of gracefully swaying panda bears. And that’s what I would draw if I were a graphic designing epidemiologist.

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Likelihoods I dislike:

The threat of blood-borne pathogens and/or OSHA violations

The probability of sunburn

The risk of witnessing someone vomit

The uncertainty of not knowing when you’ll be able to leave a function and go home

Likelihoods I like:

The chance that there will be pastries.

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Overheard:

Person A: “I could make you a nice dinner.” Person B: “I think I’m kind of past the point of a nice dinner.”

Sometimes you’re just past that point. 

“Stop it! Will you stop trying to do ear things to this chicken?”

Perhaps instead you could make chicken a nice dinner. Interpret that as you wish.

Father singing to his crying baby: “Pasta, pasta, pasta, pasta…”

That is also what I want when I’m crying.

“You can’t Freudian slip your way into a marriage!”

Oh no? 

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When I teach collective/uncountable nouns–usually as a consequence of teaching the distinction between “fewer” and “less,” and between “number” and “amount”–I find myself thinking “I should describe a collective noun as something you could take from your roommate without them noticing!”

I would like to note that I don’t actually traffic in that practice unless one of my roommates offers (except for shampoo. It was an emergency), but that’s where my mind goes. A splash of milk? A palmful of conditioner? Collective nouns! Not noticeable when removed! Countable nouns, in contrast–one or five candy bars, a lightbulb, (this premise stopped working when I considered things like grapes and paper clips, but countable hypothetically versus easy to count is a different discussion).

I haven’t tried this out on any students yet. Mostly because I don’t want them deciding that I’m a secret thief.

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When I started high school I remember thinking that my whole life was going to change because….I would be falling asleep at night with the image of a different set of surroundings in my head (that is, the knowledge that I would be spending most of my hours in a different building than I had for my five years of middle school was a minimal but constant presence).

I was thinking about that today because the yoga teacher who gave the quote about anxiety/depression/mindfulness (see here) also talked about how she had, before becoming a yoga teacher and thus having a more variable and peripatetic schedule, worked in an office setting, and although she didn’t like the job itself she did find calm in knowing that eight hours of her day would be in a constant setting.

Because I usually–though less frequently with the growing preference for Skype–see students in their homes, there’s no one place that I go Monday through Friday. Obviously, both the yoga teacher and I know where we’re going (I assume…but when I get a last-minute call, there isn’t any time for anticipation, and I’m already out of the house, so that actually has less of an effect); it’s the holding-in-your-mind of so many different places that feels more tiring than having a fixed destination.

(Not that I’m complaining. I like going to different places every day. But it’s a different background state of mind.)

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