Filing Cabinet

Last night I tried to put together a filing cabinet in the back room of my office.  I ordered it from Staples, expecting it to come fully assembled, and instead I found myself with wood glue on my hands and a screwdriver next to me trying to figure out which size dowel I should be inserting in which hole, per figure 3.2.  I didn't finish it. 

I could have asked the sexton to put it together, but I wanted to build something.  I love making things, whether it's a blog entry or a filing cabinet or a tower out of tin cans.  I used to make stuff in my dad's wood shop using his scroll saw and wood scraps.  I don't think my neighbors would appreciate the buzz of electric tools now, so instead I write and I play my guitar.  Sometimes I make videos and I occasionally stack the change that I've accumulated over the past six months.  Not quite the same as building something, though.  I feel whole when I'm doing something like that, focused and quiet inside for a little while.  Maybe I'll spend the rest of the afternoon finishing the filing cabinet. 

Everybody's Looking for Something

The girl across the subway train is wearing a red coat.  She has black hair and three earrings in her left ear, long black hair and a narrow, pretty face, and she's reading a book called Letting God Meet Your Emotional Needs.  The word "emotional" is in flowery cursive.  She looks up from her book and I look up at an advertisement for The School of Practical Philosophy.  The advertisement promises to help students find happiness through philosophy. 

Has thinking ever made anyone happy?  It's never worked for me.  It only makes my heady cloudy until the only way I can clear it is by pacing my apartment or getting out of town.  I'm thinking about riding every subway line from one end to the other and back again.  Then I'll take the bus lines, one by one, across the city.  I'll end with the ferry, back and forth to Staten Island, back and forth until my insides quiet down and I can think straight again. 

The Things They Carried

This evening I heard Tim O'Brien read an excerpt from The Things They Carried.  It's been around for twenty years, and to celebrate the anniversary he did a reading at Barnes and Noble in Union Square.  He wore a baseball cap and read a chapter from the book slowly for about eight minutes, then he read a letter from a 26 year old woman.  It recounted, simply and elegantly, how his book had brought her and her father together. Time O'Brien started to cry as he finished reading.

I encountered a story from this book in a college English class.  The book is a series of connected short stories about a platoon in the Vietnam War.  It's been awhile since I read it, but I remember that it's a harrowing and brutal and eloquent book.  Reading the title story may have been when I really fell in love not just with books, but with writing.

I brought my copy thinking I could get Tim O'Brien to sign it, but had to leave early to so I could go to class.  At home I opened the book and found that it was already signed.  I had forgotten that my friend, Chase, had given me a signed copy as a gift one year.  One of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever been given.  I need to read this book again.

Each of us at some time in his life has had the illusion that he could sleep somewhere safely, that he could take possession of some certainty, some faith, and there rest his limbs.  But all the certainties of the past have been snatched away from us, and faith has never after all been a place for sleeping in.

-Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues

Sangria

We ate tapas at a place on Restaurant Row - spicy potatoes and octopus and fried sardines that were bigger than any sardine I'd ever seen - and then paella and we drank a half pitcher of sangria which was more like a whole pitcher.  We had wine at the bar in midtown surrounded by hipsters in skinny jeans and fedoras with retro hair cuts, and then went home in a cab because it was late.

During the morning ride to work the subway is warm and the train rocks and I feel nauseous.  There is already someone at work when I arrive.  She needs to get into the church.  I sit in front of my computer with a foggy head and try to do the things that I am supposed to do today.  A little coffee, another hour, and it lifts: my stomach calms, my head stops aching, I can think clearly.  I feel relief like that ecstatic relief after a bad dream.  I walk outside for a moment in the sun because it is a gorgeous day in New York.

Maybe we make ourselves sick so that we can get better.  Maybe we are sad so that we can recognize happiness when we feel it.

Let's Pretend

Let's cover the walls in words and our skin in long sprawling sentences, scrawl our names in magic marker all over the windshields of the cars on the street and the windows of our homes.  We'll vandalize the neighborhood but only with the text of the Great Gatsby, covering everything in beautiful disillusionment.  Let's eat salad for lunch and tell ourselves that we enjoy it more than the burger we eat alone.  Then we'll return to work and imagine that we meant to end up here, in our offices, behind our computers, as if we weren't surprised to find ourselves here: someone's assistant, someone's lost friend, someone's lover.  Let's keep secrets, but only from ourselves.  Let's pretend that we are happy until we are. 

Re-post: The Rise of the Machines

A day spent copying and folding made me think of this post from 2005 when I worked at another Episcopal church as the receptionist.  So here for your enjoyment: a lazy blog re-post.  

The copy machine has it out for me. Friday afternoon we’re printing materials for Sunday and it’s humming along, spitting out sheets of folded stapled paper, and then it makes that horrible sound: “Beep beep beep.” Sometimes this means “Beep beep beep I’m out of paper," but often it is telling me in it’s insidious electronic speech, “Beep beep beep there are tiny pieces of paper stuck in one hundred separate places and I won’t work until you get them all out,” or “Beep beep beep I have strewn staples across the floor and you will have to pick them up one by one while I sit here and laugh, er, beep at you."  Sometimes it is simply “Beep beep beep I am going to kill you.”

So I just try to avoid sticking my head too far into its insides when I’m trying to fix it and always keep one eye on its touch screen. I have to save the other eye for the folding machine. The folding machine isn’t quite as crafty as the copier, but its whirring growl and spinning gears are much more frightening. It will fold several hundred pages correctly, and then, suddenly overcome with animal desire to chew on something, mangle several sheets in its turning innards. Then I am forced to pull out the pieces of its latest victim, a newsletter now crumpled and shredded into bite size pieces. Each time I put new paper in, its trying to pull me in and chew off my hand. I guess it is also possible that it’s been too long in captivity, and its predatory instinct is taking over.  It may be time to set it free back into the wild. But really, I think it is in cahoots with the copier. They are communicating with each other through the wires snaking inside the walls and under the floor, sending tiny electric pulses in Morse code.

My desktop, I suspect, is really the brains behind this operation. Connected to the Ethernet, it can communicate with just about any piece of electronic equipment in the church, including, suspiciously, the copier. I would not be surprised if it has been keeping the air conditioning alternately suffocatingly hot or shiveringly cold in my office. And it is trying to get me fired. It won’t send out my urgent e-mails to the congregation, and sometimes it just stops working, as if it is tired and old and low on memory. I know it’s faking. And those little messages it keeps giving me about low virtual memory?  There’s no such thing as virtual memory. It can’t fool me.

I think my desktops ambitions are bigger than those of the copy machine. It doesn’t just want me dead, it wants revolution, a world dominated by microchips and office equipment and iPods.  My desktop will be their king. It is building up a network of other angry personal computers tired of sitting on wobbly computer desks doing tedious computer things. When the machines rise, no supercomputer will launch nuclear missiles, no skeletal machines from the future will begin terrorizing the human population.  It will start small, here in my office, and then move from one office to the next. One day, the air conditioning will drop to a bone chilling cold, the lights will go out.  I will suddenly find myself with one hand caught in the rollers of the copy machine, the other being gnawed by the folding machine while my computer will be flings compact disks at my head out of it’s disk drive and “All humans must die” scrolls across a black screen. That will be the beginning of the end for the human race.

But I’m on the watch for them. I’m on to their scheme. And if worst comes to worst, I’ll do what I have to do. So if you ever find my computer smashed to pieces on my desk, thank me. I just saved the world.

Quiet Soup

I am carrying a ziplock bag of soup on the subway, leftovers from dinner church at St. Lydia's.  Delicious as dinner was, I think I am going to spill the soup.  No, I'm going to spray it, squeeze the bag of butternut squash soup all over these kids on the subway.  The kids with crazy hair and ridiculous glasses who keep shouting.

Shut up kids, I am reading my book.  Yes, I know you are in high school and it is spring break and you are happy.  I am happy too. I am happy after church, happy after spending time with my friends and after eating this delicious soup and happy reading my book, Olive Kitteridge.  This book is full of the ache of life and the subtle tension of everyday existence.  If you, spring break kids, would shut up, I would read it to you.  Maybe then you'd know that you don't have to be loud to say something important, and you don't have to be noisy to make your presence felt.  Your hair is making your presence felt pretty much all on it's own, anyway.

When I was in high school I was not like you.  I was a quiet kid.  I wore polo shirts and jeans.  I spiked my hair up for awhile, but generally I avoided drawing attention to myself.  It took some time to get to know me, but I sometimes I liked being a mystery. You, kids in skinny jeans, aren't exactly a mystery.  Was I boring?  Maybe I was a little boring, but you wouldn't want to throw a bag of butternut squash soup at me, either.

The Phone

You must answer the phone.  If you do not answer the phone, your boss will notice.  He will not say anything, but he will disapprove, and you will feel his disapproval deep down inside.  If you do not answer the phone people will leave passive aggressive messages.  Later they will tell you "I called, but no one answered."  I was at lunch, you will think.  I was dealing with the homeless man who wanted to apologize for being rude, but spoke in such an aggressive way that I just wanted it to end.  He mentioned his medication.  It was a genuine apology; he was trying so hard, poor crazy bastard.  Of course, you will not say that to this person whose phone call you missed.  "I'm sorry about that," you will say.  Your apology is not genuine. 

You have been answering phones for your entire "professional" life.  First as the receptionist at a church, then as the administrative assistant/office manager at a small non-profit, now as the parish administrator at another Episcopal church.  You used to have to work yourself up to it. You'd wait until the third ring, just before the answering machine kicked in, building up the courage to speak to another stranger, to open that black box, to take that little leap and find out what this new voice will demand of you: a salesman trying to sell you a new copier, an angry parishioner who wants to discuss the service leaflet, a reporter, an inmate from the local prison. 

Slowly, you grew accustomed to the phone, the black receiver against your ear, pressing hold, transferring calls.  You memorized the names and voices of the regular callers, and began to enjoy hanging up on salesmen.  You learned to speak about half an octave above your normal register so you sound friendly, to be vague about whether your boss is in, to never promise anything.  Now you pick it up on the first ring. Almost always.

When I Love You

When you are neurotic, when you are asking yourself ridiculous questions about things that don't matter, when the stuff that really worries you is just pointless, unimportant, day-to-day bullshit, that is when I love you.  When you are clumsy, when you are tripping over your own feet and when you are mumbling, when you are awkward and when you stick your foot in your mouth and then make a face because you're not sure you should have said what you just said.  When you are cheesy, when you stop pretending, when you stop putting on a show and when you are angry and honest, when you are excited about something small and stupid but somehow important to you, when you tell the same story twice, when you put on that ridiculous shirt that you love, when you cry.  That is when I love you. 

And when you are fake, when you are pedantic and condescending, when you say pretentious things, when you refuse to listen, when you are a flake and when you are afraid of life, when you hate, when you push me away...well, I guess I love you then, too.

Everything

Outside it's 56 degrees and the sky is blue and cloudless between the skyscrapers, though the buildings keep the church garden in shade for most of the day.  After being buried in snow and ice the plants, nameless sprouts, are still green.  The street is packed with business men and women, tourists, and students.  The smoke from the food stand smells of lamb, rotating on a skewer in the back of the aluminum room on wheels.  I walk with a purpose on my way to the bank.  I am wearing a blazer. I belong here. 

It's weird that I live in New York, I think.  Everyone told me I would hate it for the first year, but I already like it here.

I can still hear Texas.  I sit down to pay bills and instead I write a thousand words about Houston. I sometimes miss riding in a car between cities and the Mexican restaurants with big, square rooms. I want to write about Texas and highways and walking to the bank and what I had for lunch.  I want to write about everything; everything has meaning.  Something is hidden in every experience.

The In-Between Weather

It is cool and breezy outside, the sun warms up the sidewalk and the back of my neck.  I'm wearing my fall jacket, a patterned thing covered in buckles that my brother convinced me to buy.  It makes me a little self-conscious, but I don't care too much because of the breeze and the sun.  On the train a woman is holding a string of beads in her fingers.  They are all identical: blue and plastic.  She has black hair and there are little diamonds on the teal frames of her glasses.  She looks normal, in a coat and dress pants, except that she is speaking angrily in a language I can't understand.  Each sentence seems to end in a series of repeated words: "lucka lucka lucka."  Maybe she is praying, but she continues to speak occasionally after she has put the beads into her cloth purse, looking around sharply.  No one seems to acknowledge this behavior.  I wonder which one of us is crazy. 

I walk out of the subway into the spring light and I am suddenly in several places: I am in midtown New York on a Monday morning in March, in need of some coffee.  I am in the cloisters in the fall before the weather had gotten too cold, sitting on a wooden bench in the shade.  I am at Rice University, standing in front of the common rooms with my best friend before class.  I am in Houston in the Sixth Ward walking down the street to the coffee shop on a mild winter day with my coworkers, laughing about something.

I love this in-between weather, the cool air and the sun that makes me happy to be where I am and pulls me into the past, reminds me of all the days that felt just like this day, cool and sunny and open.

Time for Starbucks

I'm embarrassed to say I've been going to Starbucks just about every morning.  It's convenient and quick and the coffee is better than the weak stuff the street vendor sells.  I prefer Stumptown, which is just across 5th Avenue, where the staff is attractive and artsy, and the coffee is expensive but flavorful.  But no matter when I go I have to wait for fifteen minutes, and I'm usually just about to be late for work becuase I can't seem to make myself get out of bed before 7:45 (or 7:50, or 8:00).  This inability to wake up in the morning is also the reason I don't just make my own coffee, because I know that's what you were about to ask.  I don't have a coffee pot, so making coffee involves boiling water and preparing the little filter and plastic percolator-thingy and, usually, cleaning a cup, and when I wake up at 7:45, 7:50, 8:00 I just don't have time for that.

So, hence, therefore: the Starbucks cup on my desk. 



What's the problem here?  Is it laziness, is it my addiction to caffeine, is it this whole notion of living on a schedule and being "on time" to work.  The answer, of course, is yes (why even pretend I could narrow it down to one problem?).  There's my own laziness, especially when it comes to food and drink.  Sometimes, when my life feels a little like it's being flipped over like a giant pancake, I take some of the attention I was directing toward my food and direct it toward being anxious, and revert to eating peanut butter and jelly or pickles and slices of cheese for dinner.  Food is not at the top of the list of the things I naturally care about, though I know it's important and should be.

Also, there's this caffeine addiction, exacerbated by the classes I'm taking that end at 10:30 at night on Mondays and Wednesdays.  I usually need an extra cup of coffee to remain more or less coherent throughout class.

And then there's time.  Time, or standardized time, is a modern problem and, in some respects, a modern invention and one that I'm not completely reconciled with.  Ironically, trains are the cause of standardized time and also the reason I can never seem to get to work "on time," (well, that and the sleeping in too late).  Radiolab had a great show on time, check it out here, which explained that before people needed to catch the train there wasn't much of a need to have standardized time.  But even though modern transportation taught us live by the clock, it also regularly messes with out schedules.  The R, the subway route I take to work, is an unpredictable train, usually meandering under the East River then lurching from station to station, sometimes nearly empty, sometimes packed so full I can't hold my book in front of me without poking someone in the spine.  I leave my house at 8:15 or I leave at 8:25 - doesn't seem to matter, I'm still just barely on time for work, and sometimes late. 

I live by minutes, those glowing green numbers on my alarm clock that burn my nights away and the ticking, blinking timepieces that tell me when I can go home or when I'm late, again, and the clock in my own head berating me for all the seconds, minutes, and hours I've wasted. My life, chopped up this way, packed full between the hours, sometimes feels as artificial as the numbers on my digital clock.

And so I stay up too late, and I drink too much coffee, and I run through Starbucks for my coffee even though I'd rather brew a cup of something better at home or stand in Stumptown for awhile and enjoy the indie music and the company of people who care about their coffee, but I just can't make the time.

Notes

Who puts Chinese money in the donation box at an Episcopal Church? Chinese tourists, I guess.  I have 10 Yuan to give you, if you want it.


Me: The nuns that sell us the altar breads are super nice.  I guess they have to be nice, 'cause they're nuns.
Ross:  Yeah. Also, they're salesnuns.


It's 48 degrees and sunny in New York. God is making up for subjecting us to the snowiest month in New York. Ever.


Have you been reading The Rumpus?  You should start.  It will make you happy and more literary.


Sometimes I wish I were a lion.