This Rogue’s Town . . .

I awoke this morning . . . though I suppose "awoke" is much too strident of a term, perhaps "inverse collapsed" would have more aptly described it . . . with the lights in my apartment still on, my skin slightly redolent of insect repellent and various parts of my body itching and welted from what turned out to be a losing all-night duel with an especially peckish mosquito.  Alas there was no chance to sleep in.  We had to get ourselves on a Queens-bound 7 Train.  Millets Point/Shea Stadium.  Yes, we’ve seen this movie before.  To wit:

I’ve learned not to underestiminate the vector value of a little bit of desperation; it’s gotten me up earlier than I need be on so many Saturday mornings like this.  And today, it propelled me clear across Queens to Shea Stadium, around the Unisphere, and all-the-way to Homeplate at a pace of 6:10 per mile.  It’s been like this for awhile, as you know, and it’s alot of desperation, anger, sorrow, and love to effectively revive, engage, and dispose of before most people have even gotten up in the morning.  If I’ve been able to do that, then I know I can do this November and if I can do this November, I have no doubt that I can do anything and I won’t need the Board of Law Examiners to tell me otherwise.
-"Correr es mi destino", 7/30/2005

I’m not in the habit of self-referencing my own posts, but this one, perhaps more than any other I’ve written here in Rogue’s Town, bears revisiting.  Last year’s Run to Home Plate marked the beginning of a new stage in my life-much as I deplore the division of life into "stages"-I had tentatively titled the "Time of Legends".  All that stood in the way between me and a three forty-five finish in the Marathon was my own vaunted sense of self-sabotage.  At which point, I would expect my no less-vaunted and ever-vectorial sense of desperation to kick in and carry me along to that still nebulous and ever-elusive place called "my goals in life". 

We haven’t gotten there yet, suffice it to say.  But we’re making good time. 

Those of you keeping score ’round these parts know what followed from this post.  My mother’s diagnosis.  Her "last months".  Her subsequent seeming recovery.  My protracted job search.  Her panic attacks.  My Marathon.  My 3:28 finish time.  The wall I hit somewhere crossing the Queensboro.  Her panic attacks.  My failing the bar on the first try.  The fact that, in spite of everything, she said the right things.  "You can do it, you just need to hustle".  Her son, however, does not hustle, he runs.  For long distances at that.  Oftentimes not very elegantly, but he finishes what he starts.  Sometimes faster than he thinks.  Sometimes unawares as to why or how.  Sometimes In under three and a half hours.  When he was supposed to finish in 3:45.  The vector value of a little desperation.  And the three months that followed.  Bar exam, winter edition and all the psychosis it entailed.  A passing performance (to be revealed at another time), and a good ten-pound weight gain for good measure.  It matters if you run.  Really, it does. 

And then another diagnosis.  And an emergency hospitalization.  And my Dad unable to tell me on the phone through his own tears.  And forms that needed to be signed.  Wills.  Partnership agreements.  Corporations.  A matter of months.  "I want to die" she said repeatedly one night.  Jeff said I would do the right thing at the right time.  He said he would check in with me on Monday.  He was hit by an intoxicated Corvette driver later that night.  He is on Roosevelt Island now, where he will stay until he can leave.

Life provides no textbook on precisely how and when to love, nor are their internships or work-study programs to teach the tools of the craft.  One need only ride that endless vector of desperation to find out.  Some, it turns out, need to stay on board longer than others do.  It doesn’t speak to any personal shortcoming on their part.  Just a matter of perspective and will, each of which come at a very steep price.  And, quite frankly, it really doesn’t matter at the end of the day if you passed the bar exam in three jurisdictions. 

I know it.  Because I did. 

Though, frankly, it does matter in New York that you score an 85 on the MPRE.  And we still have that prove.  However, unsinister the Professional Responsiblity wing of the National Conference of Bar exams may seem at first blush.  Iowans, they all are.  Loose Meat and Magic Mountains, you betcha.  I’d be lying if I said I knew what to do now, that I felt completely within my depth.  But I do know that I’ve become old hat at revival, engagement, and disposition.  Even on just a few hours of sleep, with the lights still on and my skin still itchy. 

I finished that race today in 6:34.  Around Shea Stadium, the Unisphere, and back to Homeplate. I’ve still got a little while to go.  But I’ve earned me a spot in the 2007 NYC Marathon.  This is indeed the Time of Legends and I’m still here.  We’re still here.  Yes, you and I.   And I’m happy to have the company, though quite frankly I’d appreciate if you’d pick up the pace.  I’m still riding that vector, and I’m learning it doesn’t slow down for anybody. 

***You Are Best Described By…***

Impression, Sunrise
By Claude Monet

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Jeff has been moved to Roosevelt Island, where neither bridge nor tunnel cross save for the F train, when it stops, and The Tram, when it chooses to work.  In a city where trestled masterpieces criscross the East River like so many castiron Rialtos . . . Rialti? . . . Roosevelt Island occupies a transitory deadzone between the Queensboro and the Triboro.  Between tall-masted Mannahatta, low-slung Astoria (without power for over a week now), and the slowly crystallized Long Island City, a blocky, Stalinist solution to that most capitalist of quandries: finding decent multi-bedroom rents in New York City. 

The F train was running on the V line, overshooting the island, necessitating a detour via Roosevelt Ave/Jackson Heights.  Right president.  Wrong station.  The Tram is not functioning, or at least I’ve decided it won’t, so as to rule it out at an option.  A tram, high up in the sky, with nothing but the river to break the fall.  Who needs it? Not I.  Jeff will remain here until he can leave. 

I’ve long wondered who lives out here, presuming the views to be phenomenal, which indeed they are.  Just as I imagine/remember the opening credits of Diff’rent Strokes, which panned briefly across the skyline of East Uptown, to be.  And then what was so errant about that first "e" to have to replace with an apostrophe?

Jeff has been speaking for a few weeks now, in spite of the trach in his throat. 

"What street are we at?"

"Street? Jeff, I don’t know what the streets are called out here"

It’s true, I don’t.  We’re at One Main Street, on an Island with seemingly only one road and no commercial functions.  How awful would it be to come along this way and not even get a river view?

"No . . . what street in Manhattan?"

"Um . . . I dunno . . . I mean, maybe we’re parrallel to Sutton Place? Beekman Place? We’re just south . . . south? . . . of the Queensboro Bridge.  59th Street, so maybe we’re at 56th, 57th? Where do you think that is, Jeff? Beekman Place?"

"I guess"

Jeff has developed pneumonia.  No fever.  But he has an infection in his chest, just like he did those first weeks in the ICU, which he was not awake to remember.  The nurses don’t follow up with him.  To get to his hospital ward, you pass through an assortment of indigent enfeebled, bereft of various limbs through various transgressions.  All Jeff did was step outside his door on a Friday night. 

"Jeff, when you’re well enough to walk we should get everyone together and have a weenie roast out on the promenade.  We’ll bust out the bag of Kingsford and . . .

. . . good god, did I just say weenie roast?

"Weenie roast?", exclaimed his mother, "oh yah, it looks lovely outside."

But I meant it.  I haven’t been to a bona fide cookout in a while, let alone hosted one.  It’s been years since my parents switched to propane.  Something so reminiscent of childhood, though, the smell of processed meat grilling in some forest preserve somewhere.  Old School.  Maybe Daniel Wright Woods.  None of those around here.  Just Roosevelt Island, somehow squeezed in the middle of the center of the universe, with no way to get to it but underground, and up in the sky.  A peculiar little refuge from a city of ghosts. Jeff will remain here until he can leave. 

And until then, these visits will continue.  F train from Herald Square.  To a stop where many get on but at which hardly anyone ever seems to leave.  The station an aesthetic cross between the D.C. Metro and the one in Montreal.  A couple of hundred feet below the 14th mile where I hit my wall.  Where Jeff will remain until he can leave.  This, I suppose, will take some getting used to. 

***You Passed 8th Grade Spanish***

Congratulations, you got 7/8 correct!

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(1) BTW, guess who’s coming to Prospect Park August 7th?!!!

. . . probably wouldn’t be too much different from today in Central Park.  Malian melodies aside, Summerstage could not have been more unfathomably hot.  Today’s trifecta of Amadou & Mariam, Daby Toure, and some French DJ outfit that spun vinyl for really much too long, comprised my first ever forray into outdoor music in the Park.  After weathering two hours worth of opening acts, Said and I finally cashed it in midway through the A&M(1) set, but not before they performed "Beau Dimanche" to a surprisingly disengaged crowd, not before Said could take in all the scenery(2), and not before I could sartorially memorialize the event with a concert t. 

I love merch! Merch is the reason we even have live music.  I bet Mozart had merch way back in the day.  Maybe with Faberge eggs or some shit like that.  Were Mozart and Faberge even alive at the same time? And it’s worth mentioning the mad mad props I got for my "Ana b’hib Nyoo Yoork" t-shirt from certain of the crowd.  Alright perhaps not mad mad props, but a whole lot of eyeballing.  Evidentally, it’s quite the political statement these days to engage with Arabic culture in a manner that does not involve missile strikes. 

But I digress.  My seven-hour stint as a marathon marshall notwithstanding, I think today was my single longest expanse of time in Central Park, an area of the city I interract with frequently but tend to avoid as much as possible.  After an hour doing laps up at Lasker and the three-hour concert that followed, I expect to be a decidedly distressed shade of purple by tommorrow.  And being that the heat (in conjunction with yesterday’s gut-busting post-race binge) flatly killed my appetite today, I expect I’ll be looking particularly gaunt for my efforts too. 

But we’ve got ourselves a heat wave here in New York for the next few days.  I expect my as yet non-air conditioned confines to remain characteristically unbearable.  All the more reason not to bemoan the late hours at the new job.  The agency I work for is a bureaucratic boondoggle of high comedic proportions, replete with jaded career civil servants, endless in-jokes, and a hyper-exagerrated sense of crisis.  And you know what? I absolutely love it! Okay, perhaps "love it" is to strong of a term.  Maybe perhaps not the kind of love between a man and a woman (exclusively in about 23 states, sad to say), or the love one might have for a fine Cuban cigar.  More like the in-between size at Cold Stone, much as the allure of that place continually evades me. 

We’ve been working around a series of deadlines in the past week that has bestowed on me decidely big firm-esque hours, complete with a dial car home.  It’s quite an interesting turn-of-place for me: finding a job like this on craigslist of all places.  Again, I’m in an office with no windows.  But I’m equidistant from a Hale & Hearty and a Chipotle.  And after this Wednesday, I can begin biking down to work.  For the right now to November, this will more than do.  This’ll be just what I need. 

Now the challenge to avoid anything dismissal-worthy.  Highly unlikely, but it’s only been one week on the job and those of you keeping track know perfectly well how stranger things have been known to happen in these here parts. 

(1) BTW, I’m simply crestfallen that there are no more short-sleeve Aggie for Kinky t-shirts available for sale . . .
(2) L.H.O.O.Q., as the Dada-ists might say . . .

***Your Pirate Name Is…***

Evil Ian the Infected

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In spite of the decidedly Sufjanesque meter to flying New York-to-Chicago-via Michigan, I’ve resolved never again to fly into Detroit-Metropolitan-Wayne County Airport (which is neither "Detroit", nor "Metropolitan", but by all marks unabashedly "Wayne County") for any reason.  Period.  I’ve held various iterations of this view over the course of the past decade, beginning back in 1998 with my first ever connecting flight therein.  From D.C. 

Northwest is a terribly uncomfortable airline for one thing.  Fond as they are of AIRBUS and it’s three-abreast(1) seating plan.  They also make you pay ONE DOLLAR for, get this, TRAIL MIX.  Not pretzels.  Not honey roasted peanuts.  One dollar for fucking cashew raisins with almonds.  And the more raisins than cashew.  It tickles me, Northwest Airlines, to see that you hold my wellbeing in such high esteem, especially when yours is one of the oldest fleets in the sky, as evidenced by the very troublesome swerves performed as we taxied turbulently in the skies over Romulus. 

By the way, what the hell kind of a name for a town is Romulus? Is their high school’s team name the "Teatsuckers"? Even my favorite musical Michiganian of the moment had nothing positive to say about the place.  To wit:

Once when our mother called,
She had a voice of last year’s cough.
We passed around the phone,
Sharing a word about Oregon.
When my turn came, I was ashamed.
When my turn came, I was ashamed.

I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her
I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her
I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her
I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her

-Sufjan Stevens, "Romulus"

And then the airport itself.  Back in 1998, it was one of the most dank and hideous spaces I’ve ever seen in commercial aviation.  I wasn’t expecting anything on the order of Amsterdam Schiphol or Paris-CDG2, but what I got looked almost liked the third word equivalent of Milwaukee’s unlovely, but still likeable, Mitchell Field.  Worse yet, this was pre-TSA, the woman at the security check point had a horribly infected right cartilage from a piercing gone awry. Back then, they promised a new Midfield Terminal to be completed by 2001.  Presumably free of auricular chondritis. 

Fast forward to 2003.  Said terminal now complete.  Just over a full mile in length, with twice as much space for moving sidewalks and an indoor monorail.  There are dancing fountains.  And an underground passageway connecting another miles worth of concourse decorated with, get this, flashing neon lights and ethereal mood music.  My then-still-easily-wounded Chicagoan sensibilites wondered where I might have seen this before. 

But alas, no matter, the concourse was wide and filled with light.  The desk agents could talk shop with you about what The White Stripes were like before they got big.  The eating options were plentiful too; most notably National Coney Island and its ever-popular Hani Special (2).  Also a Max & Erma’s.  Jose Cuervo’s Tequileria. And plenty of Vernor’s ginger ale to go around.  Alas, over subsequent visits I would notice something critical about most of these establishments: I would never have time to eat in any of them because, invariably, my flight would arrive at gate A1 where my connecting flight was waiting for me at gate A80, leaving me, with all my carryon as is my wont, to negotiate a good mile and a half worth of crowded moving sidewalks. Where the indoor monorail runs only on one track and that you manage to miss by a hair without fail each and every single time. 

I would arrive at my flight harried and sore.  Only to spend the next hour of my life in mortal fear of my safety.  No more. 

There are simply not enough nautical miles between here and Chicago to justify more than one takeoff and landing per leg.  American is probably no more comfortable than Northwest, but they don’t have the audacity to make me pay for peanuts.  Also, I’m free from the urge to pray constantly to a god that probably can’t do much about the turbulence.  Delta’s Chicago service is limited but their seats are comfey, their planes nearly empty, and the flight attendants more than willing to let you pack up on the service items.  My options are several. 

As for D-Troit and its KLMNorthwestContinentalSkyTeamworldgateway? Well, I’ve had quite enough Hani Special.  Bland and prone to falling apart, it does not rise to level of its decidedly more savory and fastened namesake.  And for Vernor’s Ginger Ale? Turns out, I can order it online by the case.  I will manage. 

And for Michigan, the Great Lakes State? Though its stock rate among my most favorite people in the world, turns out I don’t care much for the place. Its state universities for one thing, both of which I hate (one out of envy, the other out of pity).  It’s penchant for armed militias and rampant arson.  Kid Rock.  That weird way they say the word "salad".  The view from Detroit out the cabin window, its Grand Circus empty, it’s skyline largely abandoned.  Like Newark only more dense.  And then the five towers of the Rennaissance Center, sitting souless on the Riverfront. The crown now capped condescendingly by the GM logo.  Prime maniacal risibility.  Like I was taught to believe when we first read Faulkner back in high school. 

No time for Faulkner now.  Not when I’ve got a flight to catch. 

(1) heheh . . . he said, "breast"
(2) Vote now!

***Your 2006 Summer Anthem Is***

Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

"I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that phase.  Even your emotions had an echo.  In so much space"

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