By Corinne Flax

June 8, 2006

My Brain Is Toast My Wall Is Wet

I should be doing homework right now. Right at this exact moment in space and time my eyes should be trained on a piece of paper with a heading that reads "Multi-cultural Diversity in a Fantasy Reading Program" or something like that. My mind should be expanding as I consider the social implications of an educational system that operates primarily on a linear system of education in which there is little room for deviation or experimentation.

I could continue along this line of thought for a while, except that my mind is exhausted. The last couple of weeks have been too much for me. To much fun, to much work, to many new things, to many old friends popping up in unexpected places, to many late nights on the 2,3 train, it's all just been a daze. I remember selling my car a little less then a month ago and everything after that is a whirl.

I got up early this morning so I could go to Fairway and buy produce and still make it back home in time to go through the apartment with Franz, the super, showing him all the problems we're having. Windows are getting warped to the point where I'm afraid they will fall out of their frames. There's a leak that goes directly into the living room wall, which is a brick wall, and is therefore now a sodden brick wall. The mortar between the bricks is actually beginning to soften and crumble, filling me with a thousand and one worries about structural stability. What if the whole wall just crumbled away to nothing, what would I do?

Thanks to the crumbling wall I missed class yesterday. There I was, putting on my shoes, getting ready to run out into the rain and dash off to the library before class, when I realized the wall was dripping wet. When I touched the wall and most of a brick came off on the palm of my hand I knew that I wasn't going anywhere. I can't lie, it was a relief to not have to get sopping wet in the never ending rain, but I wish I hadn't missed class. My first summer class is Children's Literature, and I love books so much, it's a pleasure to sit around and talk about them.

On the crumbling away to nothing tip my cell phone is disintegrating much faster then the wall. Small pieces of plastic break off of it every time I use it, which is probably thirty times a day. At this rate there will be no phone left by tomorrow morning. I'm going to take it to the Verizon store shortly, but I wonder what they will be able to do for me, except advocate that I buy a new phone. I was theorizing about getting insurance and then bringing the phone in claiming that it had suddenly self destructed, but I have to admit that this is an immoral thing to do.

Of course my morals aren't what they once were: I watched John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" last night and I doubt I will ever be quite the same again. This movie bills itself as shocking, degrading, and outrageous. While it was definitely all of these things there was something else in it that made the movie more then just a campy reminder of the past. John Waters' voice is so loud and clear, and his world view so askew and yet focused that the movie was really unsettling for me. I recommend it to anyone who likes life strange and demented with a side of social commentary.

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May 29, 2006

Strength

This morning I decided enough was enough. Since I can't go to school and visit the library (because it's Memorial Day and the library is closed), there was only one option. I had to get the air-conditioners into the windows. We've had the air conditioners for two weeks. Two weeks of giant metal boxes sitting around taking up space in the living room. Every three days or so I would walk into them when I wasn't paying attention. I have the bruises to prove this.

People love giving advice about how to do things like install air conditioners. The more advice we received the less capable my sister and I felt about installing the air conditioners. And so they sat there, like abstract sculptures, in our living room. When I woke up this morning I realized that the thing that I had planned on doing today was an impossibility, that there would be no library hours on Memorial Day. This put me into a funk. I knew I would have to do something to get out of my funk, and there they were, these air conditioners weighing so heavily upon the floor of the living room and my mind.

"That's it Leah, they're going in today!" I said.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? Shouldn't we wait for the Super to do it? My friend said we need to put a brick underneath it anyway, and where are we going to get a brick from?"

I decided it would be best to ignore her negative attitude, although I did brave the alley behind our building to get some bricks. Then, with little muss of fuss we installed the air conditioners, with a little help from my sister's friend Anna. So: done and done. The air conditioners are in the windows, it was remarkably easy, and I feel very self sufficient. We emancipated women don't need superintendents to install our air conditioners! We can do it ourselves. Grrrrl Power.

This brings me to the fact that at work I'm beginning to get a reputation for being a feminist, mostly because I say things like "I'm a feminist". The people who are using this word though, they don't really mean it as a compliment. They mean it the way you might use the word cannibal or polygamist. Of course they are mostly just joking around, I mean they wouldn't seriously calling me a feminist, because that would be...insulting?

Though I am feeling empowered today, I'm also feeling a little nervous about the beginning of summer classes on Wednesday. I've had problems staying awake in class since highschool, and the longer the class the greater the likelihood that I'll fall asleep. Summer classes last 3.5 hours, am I going to be able to do this? Presumably my adult life going to bring lots of meetings and stuff like that, and it's up to me to figure out ways to get through these meetings and such without embarrassing myself by losing consciousness. I've tried a lot different things, but so far the only thing I've got going for myself is the fact that I can sleep with my eyes open.

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May 23, 2006

Jump

The past four days have been a whirlwind. How many blogs do I open up like that? Is it possible that I really am as busy/crazy as I have led my readers and myself to believe? Well...yes.

So Thursday night the whole Sbux I work at went bowling together at Chelsea Lanes. Cut to a ride around the city in a coworkers car packed with seven people. Believe me, I now know a few of my coworkers a little too well.

Friday’s highlights included a ‘labor meeting’ with my district manager. Such notable phrases as “A fish rots from the head down” were thrown around. It was so boring I thought I might claw my eyelids off. I managed to stay awake and alert the whole time though. My DM has this thing about eye contact, she’s totally obsessed with it. If you can steadily meet her eyes she thinks that you’ve got potential.

Of course she doesn’t know that each time she looks directly into my eyes I panic and freeze like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming Ford Exploder. That’s why I am so good at making eye contact. I could talk about my DM for the rest of this blog actually, but then I’d never get anywhere else. Let me just say though that my DM is about six feet tall, has platinum blonde waist length hair, and a jaw that could crush walnuts. All in all she looks remarkably like a transvestite, and her hands are huge. I know she used to work at Victoria’s Secret and I can’t imagine letting her measure my chest.

Ok so let’s get on with Friday. I met up with my friend Tess-love and we sat around her apartment for a while putting on facial masks to make our skin radiant. Tess-love is good at stuff like this, these little unexpected indulgences that make life ever so pleasant. Her great aunt was in town and she’d never sung karaoke before, so we ended up in this private Karaoke bar belting out classic rock for an hour or so. Everyone was singing and dancing, it was awesome! Then it was off to Bar Sputnik for a Castlevania party. (I suppose I should have put this link up before the show http://lecastlevania.com/ but it just didn’t fit into anything...and anyway the blog I wrote last week isn’t even up yet so...)

The next day I woke blearily at 8:30am (because of course the night goes on from where I left it), realized I had to go to Jersey, and fell back asleep. I made it to Jersey around 2pm which means I missed graduation but was just in time to go hide out behind my alma mater, Drew, and watch as this year’s crop of graduates dug up the Dog’s Fish Head IPA they’d buried at the beginning of the semester. The beer had aged to the point where it tasted sweet.

I spent the rest of the day commenting periodically “hey we’re jumping out of a plane tomorrow”. There were seven of us jumping, also spending the night in the same hotel, so of course there wasn’t much sleep going on. Yes someone got toilet papered while they were asleep. Yes people fell off beds. Yes we woke up in time for skydiving and headed out to the air strip in the Poconos.

It wasn’t till we got there that my stomach turned into a walnut. The planes were so small, the instructors so nonchalant. I had to initial about thirty different things stating that I would not sue if I died or was grievously injured. My favorite one said “I agree that parachuting and skydiving activities are of little value to society.” The next thing I knew I was putting on a yellow flight suit, and trying to tuck my hair into one of those Amelia Aerhart leather flight caps. A Brazilian guy named Herbert was my partner. At this point everything had become completely surreal. The plane was warming up, and my friends were jumping next were pointing at me and laughing because I was dressed like a banana. We got into the plane and Herbert began attaching himself to my harness. Each strap he pulled or tightened seemed to be connected to my stomach, so each time he tightened them my stomach shrank even further, from a walnut to an almond to a pea.

The airplane was so tiny, and as we took off I wondered if I was going to die. We headed into the cloud bank and soon the world below was utterly lost. This relaxed me until I glimpsed how high up we were through a break in the clouds. My stomach shrank away entirely, leaving me with an empty hollow. They opened the door to the plane, and people actually started jumping out. Suddenly my feet were hanging over the edge of the door, and I could see nothing below them but clouds. We rocked forward, backwards, and I was falling out of a plane that was thousands of feet above the ground.

We fell and fell and fell. Clouds were smashing me in the face, and they were cold. I kept on trying to remember my instructions...was it put your head back to the right or to the left? Suddenly we burst out of the clouds and all thoughts vacated my mind. There was the earth, huge and beautiful. I don’t think I screamed, or laughed, or anything, it was just to much for me.

Herbert pulled the rip cord and we snapped up-right. The wind snagged us almost immediately and we began traveling backwards, away from the landing strip. Herbert told me “We’re going backwards” and I said “Uh-huh”. He said “We’re going to have to land on that golf course over there.” and I said “Ok”. How do you argue with the guy with the parachute? We went over a soccer game and waved, and then ever so gently landed at Hole #6. As we came in for a landing it felt as if the ground really started rushing at us, and I felt more fear then I had felt the whole rest of the time. Herbert asked “Did you have a good time?” and I said “Again! Let’s do it again!”

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May 19, 2006

There Has Got To Be Something

This city is more then any one person could possibly deserve or understand. Around every corner there are moments of baffling brilliance. Baffling because any angle you loot at it from this city remains a city. The angles which give my eye such pleasure are made of steel, concrete, stone and glass. There is nothing human about them except for the large and dominating realization that every structure that exists was built by and for human existence. Brilliant because despite the clear chaos which inhabits every inch of this teeming metropolis it all works. There is a balance between the strung out junkies, the toned up yuppies, the flabby business men in suits ordering skim sugar free vanilla lattes, and the NYU students who look shinier and newer every time I see them.

Two days ago I went to see Jamie out in the Bronx and I brought her a window box plant growing kit thing. It was sort of like a clear plastic chamber that you put seeds into and then watch through the plastic as they grow. To put it together we had to mix peat pellets with hot water until they'd dissolved into rich black dirt. As we crouched on the floor of her room and I encouraged her to "really get her hands into the dirt" and "just mix it all around, squeeze it together and work the water in" I wondered what I was really doing.

What does planting some bean and pea plants have to do with increasing Jamie's vocabulary? I sort of talked to her about the word germination, touching on the latinate roots of the word Germ, but frankly that was about five seconds were of information after twenty minutes of playing in the dirt. I think playing in the dirt is a highly beneficial and important activity, but I somehow doubt that most school systems would agree with me.

Even those that do agree that planting, dirt playing, and in general whimsy are important have a much more long term out look on such activities then I do. I feel like the more I learn about teaching, the more I see of methods and theories the more I wonder if I'm cut out to really do all this. Did Jamie and I have a good time? Oh yes! We planted our seeds, got ice cream, did math home work in the park, read for a little and then walked around so she could check out the boys playing basketball. It was really very pleasant. As we left the park we stuck maple seeds on our noses and made faces at one another. Is this helping her at all?

It seems impossible that it could be helping Jamie to learn to read better. Does mere proximity with me increase her vocabulary or her comprehension level...I think not. For me I know that this is important, this going out to the Bronx and seeing Jamie. Every time I walk into her apartment and am confronted with the poster of Malcolm X with a gun that hangs directly opposite the front door I know that it's somewhere I have to be, but why?

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