Uptown Manhattan March 9, 2009

With the warmth comes the drunk neighbors outside of the bar, saying to me “Don’t smoke that cigarette, it’s bad for you. Smoke me instead.” The small, flashing neon sign advertises “Chicas Exoticas,” and the pool hall is alit. Men wearing khaki pants and wristwatches and flannel shirts take shots at cue balls and wipe the sweat from their glasses onto their thin sleeves. The music and the conversation escape through the windowpanes, not thick enough to hold it in, still not as thin as my own skin.

I am walking past and my eyes are searching the sidewalks for the community cat and she is no where to be found in the rain, I recall: Cats dislike water. A sign above a bodega advertises “A dozen roses, $10.00″ and I think to myself, jokingly, ‘well hot tamale!’ and then think, ‘yes, they probably serve hot tamales there as well.’

Little speckles of rain coat the cars parked on the side of the road. My face. My jacket. Another man says, “So beautiful,” and after a pause, “I swear!” I fought with this man a week ago outside of the laundromat. He was angry that I sat down to have a cigarette. He began shouting at me. I pleaded with him, “Porque no me dijo? Porque?” The alcohol and the exotic women must have helped him to forget this incident.

Inside of my building I notice a new emergency exit sign in the lobby. I wish it led to some place that felt like escape. Later, in my bedroom, I think ‘all of this space is mine, it isn’t much but it’s enough of a place for me to think in and work in and exist.’ Compared to the home I grew up in, it should be written off. I should be written off? Sometimes my head writes poetry and it does not make sense. It is how I exist.

Sometimes when I walk I pay attention to the trash, what does it say about anything? An empty, plastic, purified water jug, a styrofoam cup, an opened condom (used?), a pin that reads ‘Tell Dem Slavery Done!’, a very large hairpin, candy wrappers, a tumbleweed made from fake hair, and all of the etcetera’s you could ever imagine. Does it say anything about anything? Have I ever said anything about anything?

No, no. Of course not. It’s only in me to create and to keep the substance in. You know, they tell me they don’t want to hear it. Not explicitely. They don’t say it, per se. They imply with their gestures and their calculated conversation, and I was never taught to be that, and I wonder what it is like to know their secret codes, their rules that make being alive easier for them. If you know what to do then you can interact with everybody else who knows what to do. No, not me. I am strange. They have told me that too. Explicitely. They say it. Per se.

That is why I am not invited into the bar with the pool tables and the lacquered balls on the felt tables that are easy to mar. That is why I am not invited to speak the language or shop for mangoes or listen to loud music outside of my apartment in their cars. That is why they yell at me in Spanish outside of the laundromat, and when I beg them not to be angry in Spanish it upsets them more. Use your words, your only power, but keep them inside of your head, lest they lose all power on a recipient who does not want to hear it. Tell us another story about a cat, okay? Don’t say that you are fluid and sensitive and have observed our garbage and judge our priorities and character by it. Do you know any jokes about tugboats?

No, but I have one about choo choo trains.

I saved a life last night, thanks to my shoddy Spanish. November 17, 2008

I was walking down the street towards my apartment last night when I spotted a cat. I approached the cat in excitement and reached out to pet her when I noticed something wasn’t right. Her back leg was twisted outwards and her breathing was labored. I placed my hand on her body to pet her and she cried out in a long moan. After a few moments, I realized that she had fallen from a window above and probably had a couple of broken legs and internal damage.

I didn’t know what to do, so I called 311 and they informed me that the ASPCA wasn’t open on Sundays, and that I could call back at 8 a.m. on Monday. I didn’t have until Monday. I called 411 and recieved a list of animal hospitals in the New York City area. I called each one, only to be told that I could do one of two things:
1) Call ambuvet, an ambulance service for animals, and pay 250 dollars for the cat to be taken to the hospital and then put into a shelter if I couldn’t locate her owner to take responsibility for the medical bills.
2) Bring the cat to east 62nd street and drop her off in the stray animal department.

I don’t have a spare 250 dollars, hello, have you seen the economy? The rising cost of my college tuition? My rib bones because food is expensive and not eating enough of it makes them jut out?
I also didn’t want to move the cat myself, she was obviously in a lot of pain and if she had bitten me, that would be a whole other problem if I couldn’t find her proper owner, and I didn’t want to cause any more internal pain or bone breakage.

So I was sobbing by the cat, talking to her, petting her head, and trying to figure out what to do. I finally decided that I would wait until 8 a.m. and call the ASPCA. So I ran up to my apartment and grabbed a blanket and ran back down to the cat and draped it over her and stayed crouched over her. People were walking by and saying things like, “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

I had intended to stay with her through most of the night, if not all of it, until I could call for help. I was cursing the options for animal rescue in the city, and crying, and paying careful attention to the cats breathing. She was large and clean, and obviously not from the street.

I saw a woman walking towards the apartment gate that I assumed the cat’s owners lived in, and I asked her in Spanish if she lived in that building and she looked at me with fear in her eyes and said no. I then saw a man turn the corner and I asked him in Spanish if he lived in the building and he said yes. I asked him if he knew whose cat it was and he said he did not.

He did, however, stand over the cat with me, and we talked about the cat and how I thought it had broken legs and that I was going to sit with the cat until I could find help for her, and he suggested that we move the cat into the building where its owner probably lived and I said that I thought it would hurt the cat to move her, and he said that it would be temporary pain and at least she would be warmer inside the lobby of the apartment building. So I said okay and he used the blanket I had covered her with to lift her and carry her on her back so that all 4 legs were up in the air and we could see them all visibly broken and a couple of them rubbed down to blood and bone and she cried loudly as we moved her inside and my heart hurt so much but there was no other choice.

Once we got her inside I asked the man if he could get her water, and paper and a pen, and he ran to his apartment and returned with all three things. We pushed the water near her, but she only used it to hide her head, and then I tore the paper in half and wrote a note on one half in English and on the other half in sloppy Spanish not to move her because she had broken legs and instead, to call 311 in the morning at 8 a.m. sharp and to ask for the New York City Animal Rescue people. We taped up the signs and I sat with her some more and rubbed her head and asked people walking in or out of the building if they knew who owned the cat. Nothing. Nobody knew whose it was.

Finally, three teenagers were bounding down the building stairs from a higher floor and they startled the cat and she looked up and I rubbed behind her ears to calm her and I asked them if they knew whose cat it was and they said no, they didn’t, but then a girl they were with said, “Oh! That’s Bri’s cat!” and she ran off to notify Bri and the teenage guys confirmed that it was her cat and so Bri came down and she was holding her hands over her mouth and she wouldn’t look at me but I knew she was listening to me, so I started to explain the situation and what her options were and her boyfriend came down after her and I told him and he called the ambulance for animals and then he said he didn’t have the money to take the cat in an ambulance and one of the other boys offered him a ride to the animal hospital on 62nd St.
He ran up and got a box and they lifted the cat into it and I rushed over to tuck the blanket around her and told them they had to drive carefully, and make sure she didn’t move around too much, and to keep petting her head so that she could have comfort in this traumatic situation and then we all moved outside and I hugged Francesco, the man who helped me move the cat into the building in the first place, and waved good-bye to the cat owner and her friends, and asked them to let me know if they saw me around the neighborhood, and they said they would and then I went home and thought about the cat for several more hours before falling asleep.

Cockleshells and Pretense November 10, 2008

I have procured a jar full of cockle shells and do not know what to do with them. They smell like butter and thyme, since I rescued them from the owner-of-the-restaurant-where-I-work’s meal. He brought them in to be cooked and put on pizza, so he never touched the shells. As an always vegetarian and a sometimes vegan I was conflicted as to whether or not I should be taking them, but realized that not only were they headed for the garbage and the least I could do was to make sure that something came from their unfortunate death, but also that they were too beautiful to not let them become admired.  I wanted to make something from them rather than allowing them to be wasted, and although I am still conflicted about making things from them, I came up with a short list of things to do with them:

1. Cover an area of my guitar with them in a way that won’t influence the acoustics (but this will probably be too beach-y.)
2. Cover a picture frame with them  (but this will require a photograph of the beach and I don’t think that will fit into my particular decorative taste.)
3. Make jewelry from them (but this seems to be advocating their death for human vanity.)
4. Cover other random shit with them (but I don’t really have anything that I’d want to do so.)

ANY IDEAS? I have a whole jar full of cockle shells just waiting to be immortalized.

 

Also, I saw a man and a woman have their first kiss on the uptown A train. This is what I noticed about them:
-They must have just met that night because they didn’t seem to know much about the others tastes
-They debated film for almost the entire ride. She became flustered at some point while the discourse was obviously exciting him.
-She was from Australia and had a really awesome purse that unfolded like an intricate origami envelope
-They both wore Chuck Taylors. The dude looked like he was about 10 years older than her and bought all of his clothing in the 70’s. She had interesting articles of clothing but did not put them together in a thoughtful way (I only mention this as a comment on artistic taste, as I believe we dress to represent the sort of art we enjoy.)
-He kept moving closer to her, interlocking their feet without touching them
-Neither of them moved out of the way of people entering or exiting the train, even though they were stationed by the door.
-She claimed a film was modern because it had homosexuality, and he scoffed in an exaggerated fashion (I almost laughed out loud at this.)
-He finally asked her if he could kiss her, she didn’t hear him and his face turned red when he had to repeat the question.
-They finally kissed and then moved back into conversation immediately without any expressive indication that either of them were affected by the kiss.
-They didn’t see me observing them.
-I set aside my cynical notions about romance and was affected enough for the both of them.

 

Long story short, I’m a creep.

Oh, and remember bodega cat from a few entries before this? I saw her again in front of the laundrymat on my way home from work the other night and we got to cuddle for 15 minutes or so in one of the chairs outside. She kept pressing her face into me and purring and swishing her tail happily. She also started doing this cute thing where she licks my wrist and then nibbles at it and then starts licking it again. I love her, I should find out her name.

 I have so many other things I should be doing right now.

Something to Love New York City For October 15, 2008

Although I am often jarred from my internal world into the suffocating, over-crowded, rude and inconsiderate, urine-stinking, pushy world of New York City, there are days where the city is so darned charming that I can’t help but to be so thankful for my experiences in it.

“Bodegas,” the Dominican word for “Corner Stores,” are literally that, on each corner, offering soda, chips, cigarettes, and various household items. They also sometimes have live-in cats that the frequenters of the bodega can reach down and pet while perusing the chip aisle and debating between Pringles or Lay’s. Tonight, on my walk home from the subway, I spotted such a cat sitting outside of a bodega that does not sell cigarettes (that’s how I mentally categorize them), and I stopped in my rushed path home to reach down and pet the soft, grey cat. I crouched so that I could reach the cat better and she rubbed against my legs, snuck under my skirt, emerged from under my right leg, and climbed into my lap. So, there I was, crouching in the middle of the sidewalk with a purring cat in my lap who kept rubbing her head against my chin and kneading the side of my leg with her front paws in ecstasy. Feeling that I was in the way of others on the street, I stood up and made kiss noises at the cat. She reached out her paws and put them over my shoe as if giving them a hug, then she placed her head on the top of my foot and purred even louder. I laughed and said, “I have to go, baby!” and started walking down the street where she ran in front of me and looked up with her round, green eyes, and so I crouched back down and let her sit in my lap for another 10 minutes or so while making conversation in Spanish about how awesome the cat was and how sweet she was and how she loves people and people love her.

When I picked her up from my lap the second time she smelled something on the cement and became preoccupied with whatever that was, and I said goodnight to the man and to the cat and walked home with an extra bounce in my step.

Other great New York City things from today:
1. The 30-something black man listening to Bob Marley and knitting a pink scarf on the subway and our shared smile.
2. The Polish woman who touched my elbow and asked me how to get the B train.
3. The contagious smile of the Hispanic woman waiting for the bus, and when I allowed her to get on the bus ahead of me, the bus driver nodded his head at me, smiled, and asked me how I was doing.
4. The changing of the leaves in the parks, mostly to orange, but I’m sure there will soon be much variation
5. Laughing with acquaintances over cigarettes and wishing there were more than 15 minutes between classes.

“Is New York City really like a grave-yard they all ask me, and I say ‘no, that was last week, but man, that was in the past.’”