Damned Mosquitos
Hello blogland,
It’s been terribly rainy and unseasonable lately, so I figured that I would check in and write about some things. There have really been more experiences in the past month than I can even remember without prodding (I really spend more time being angry with myself for not recording them than I do actually putting down the memories), but I’ll make a full-assed (why doesn’t anyone ever use that term? Isn’t it as graphic and weird as half-assed?) attempt to let you know what my first half of living in Williamsburg has been like.
The weather of the past few weeks has just been awful, so I’ve been spending a lot of time inside the apartment reading books (the terror that is introductory college English [Literature Humanities, for you core-loving folk] made me forget how much I truly love poring over a book and engrossing myself inside its world). I’ve been getting outside every chance I get, though, and spent a good hour before interning yesterday basking in Central Park and enjoying Suze Rotolo’s A Freewheelin’ Time, her memoir about her years dating Bob Dylan. I can’t say that I was ever particularly into Bob Dylan, but the world that she described in the book (Greenwich Village in the 1960s) made me realize just why so many people in every post-60s generation are engrossed with the period.
I also recently came back from a trip to Canada to see my sister, brother-in-law, nieces, and nephew and revel in the cuteness that is little children. It was a really enjoyable trip (the kids were relatively well-behaved the whole time, which is impressive for three kids in the one to four year-old set) and I got a few really choice soundbites out of the little ones:
(I recently [well, within the last year or so] got quite a few piercings, and could notice when I was sitting on the couch with my oldest niece, J, her clearly looking up at my septum and nostril rings.) Me: What are you looking at? (not angrily, more like I knew something amusing would come of asking) J: Um… (very diplomatically looks away and up at the photographs on the wall behind me) At the photos mom took! See? (looks outside) And it’s raining!
(At the zoo, my two nieces [J, age 4, and E, who’s almost 3], sister, and I crammed into a single handicapped stall to make “potty time” easier. The kids went to the bathroom and my sister sat down to do likewise, at which point J says [quite loudly in a public bathroom, might I add]:) MOM, I CAN SEE YOUR VAGINA! (pause) I love you.
Needless to say, it was an amusing five days.
Before that, back in New York, I spent a lot of time exploring Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan, an area that I am unfortunately quite robbed of spending time in because University is so far Uptown (I know it doesn’t sound like such a schlep, but it’s hard to find time to make the forty or so minute trip down to the Village when you’re drowning in homework). Lovely Rena (meter maaaaaaaaaaaaaid) came in from New Jersey to visit me and we spent some time at our favorite non-carding bar, Heartland Brewery in Union Square (I know it’s expensive, but they have really nice beers that they brew in house. Can’t really beat that with a cheap Japanese restaurant, eh? Okay, so maybe you can. Shush.), after which we stopped to listen to a man playing accordion and a woman accompanying him with her lovely voice. We danced around tipsily and, after listening to their whole set, decided to go sit on the stairs of Union Square near the now disappeared Virgin Store (anyone know what’s going to take its place?). A bit later, quite unexpectedly, they came up behind us and introduced themselves (by inscribing it on my knuckles) as “Projekt Hex,” hailing from Germany. We had a really lovely conversation about their travels and experiences in New York, and were soon joined by a number of other buskers, including an aging breakdancer (“I’m older than you think I am; I was here before all of these young kids got their start!”) and a somewhat socially awkward, albeit kind, magician. Rena began talking to a crackhead who had sat down next to her (smoking a crack pipe in public, no less, although time was moving quickly into the early hours of the morning) about politics, and we gradually all separated.
The internship is going well; I’ve been enjoying doing various odd jobs (graphic design, mostly) for the Neo-Futurists, and am glad that I’ve been able to get into their shows for free. I’ve been unable to find a second job, though, and have been sort of stressing about that. Ah well, c’est la (shitty) economie, no?
July should be a good month; there are a bunch of free concerts in Williamsburg and I’m expecting better weather than that which characterized June (although today doesn’t really set a great precedent for that, although it has sort of lightened up in the time that I’ve been writing this post). There’s also a potential photo project coming up for a Syracuse student-run magazine, which is random but should be fun. What I’m really hoping for is that I’ll be able to start writing fiction again. For some reason that I haven’t quite discovered—self-consciousness, lack of confidence, or otherwise—I have been creatively stifled recently to the point where if I even think about writing I want to run away screaming. It’s extremely disheartening, but I guess that considering how prolific I had been throughout high school it was bound to happen. I know it will pass, I’m just trying to get it to do so more quickly than it would if I just sat on my ass and pouted about it.
Speaking of sitting on my ass and pouting, I’ve been having some oddly major life-shifting dilemmas lately. I don’t want to turn this into a therapy session because I know you don’t necessarily want to read it (and, to be honest, I don’t necessarily want to spill my little nineteen-year-old guts out to a public audience, no matter how small it may be), but I just feel like I’m at a crossroads in my life and don’t necessarily know which way to go. To be honest it almost feels like puberty all over again, which is bizarre but the most appropriate description that I can ascribe to it. I just feel sort of aimless and am having a weird longing to share that aimlessness with someone. I’ll be honest and admit that reading Rotolo’s book didn’t help much (“why can’t I be with someone exciting and intellectually stimulating like Bob Dylan?”), but I don’t entirely know how to deal with this sort of situation. I’m actually going to stop talking about it, because it’s just making me feel awkward and despondent.
Also, I have a mosquito bite on the middle section of my right pinky. What are the chances of that?
