How do 3 million people function in a city where the following is true:

One 5 oz cappuccino: $3.50
One ginger cookie (3 inch diameter): $3.00
One single serving of fruit juice: $4.90
Box of 40 tampons: $9

Granted, there are cheaper spots. I am learning. Here is what I’ve learned:

1.) While supporting local indie cafes is something I believe in, it is cheaper to go to Starbucks. Usually, I don’t go to either (I am a fan of the thermos brought from home), but last night before my evening writing class I wanted fluffy coffee treat. Plus, it was payday and I thought that I’d do a nice, cheerful, small thing for myself. If I would have known that I was going to haphazardly eat the cost of two loads of clean clothes at the laundromat, I wouldn’t have.

2.) Tampons are cheaper in my uptown neighborhood by about 2 bucks. But when when unexpectedly menstruating in midtown yesterday, I nearly hemorrhaged when asked to fork over a tenner for a cluster of cotton wads on strings.

3.) I don’t usually buy bottled drinks (aside from beer), but after nearly passing out on the crowded subway to work on Monday, I bought an OJ to revive me. My mistake. I nearly fainted all over again when I handed the deli cashier a fiver and only got a dime change.

Sometimes products don’t have price tags or you neglect to do a thorough price check because you assume, “hey – I’m buying a perfectly normal product. I know what I’m getting into.” When this happens and you make it to the cash register, you are faced with an awkward decision. You can choose to avoid a scene and pay or you can balk: “how much?!? Never mind – I don’t want it, anyhow.” I need to start being more comfortable with the latter.

Plus, I can focus on the good. I can get a gory piece of pizza or a steam shriveled hot dog for pretty cheap. I can get an disgustingly sweet deli coffee for a reasonable price. I can take comfort in the fact that I’ve always typically made and brought my own foods anyhow, saving my money, my waist line, and my environment. I can take a deep breath and remind myself that I don’t need a car that would suck up paychecks with gas, insurance, maintenance, and tolls. I can vent a little and hope that it makes me laugh. Which it did. Menstruating in midtown is pretty funny.
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How much do things cost in your neck of the woods?

Before finishing East of Eden tonight, the last time that I’d read a book that’s changed me was high school. I’m talking about a book that articulates specific things inside me, things about the world that I’d been craving names for.

In my high school, the only training in philosophy that we ever received was in English class, through novels by the likes of Fitzgerald and Hemmingway. These macho members of the Lost Generation taught us about the existential crisis, about the fallacy of the American Dream. I have a special place in my heart for each book on my high school’s summer reading list. When I think of work by Faulkner, Camus, Miller, Sartre, Beckett, and Pound, I feel like I’m remembering an old flame; they articulated my feelings about the world and because of this, in the true style of high school fanaticism, these authors embodied what I wanted in a man. Freaky, eh? 

I think I just wanted someone who understood my dissatisfaction with the suburban status quo and the only  voice of dissent that I felt I had access to in my small Midwestern hometown came from the authors on the required reading list. I wanted someone to see the world as a place of choice, as a place where social conventions and religion are oftentimes absurd constraints used to control and manipulate people. I wanted someone who would laugh in the face of convention with me, who would delight in living a life that felt nothing less than authentic. These authors were chalk full of all of that. Who wants a homecoming corsage when you could have the burden of existential freedom? Its a good thing I met Shaun when I did – I lucked out to have met someone who gave me both.

Anyhow, my high school crushes on these literary figures, in large part, may be the sad result of high school curriculum’s sickening disregard for females in the cannon. Perhaps if we studied ladies as well as men, I would have understood that Camus didn’t totally *get* me, that Miller and I weren’t completely meant for each other. I would have been awestruck, not lovestruck. I would not have associated intellectual/philosophical compatibility to sexual chemistry. I guess I’m just hopelessly hetero like that.

I hope that my hometown English department has evolved a  bit since I left, but while a lot has happened to me in 8 years, I doubt the same is true for the school. When I was there, the English department thought that they could get away with beating Room of One’s Own like a dead horse for a month and that would safely cover the female literary perspective. The funny thing is, Virginia Wolf writes at great length about how ladies with the urge to write need to ditch the housework and babies for a while and get their authoring on. She urges the literary world to take people with vaginas seriously as writers. And just imagine how much her message might resonate if only it weren’t the ONLY female on the public high school required reading list. Sheesh! It makes you even more furious to think of how underrepresented authors of color are, how the homo-erotic pull of many, many works of fiction is rarely discussed in the classroom.

Anyhow, I’m getting pretty off topic here. I meant to write about East of Eden and how I hadn’t felt this wrapped up in a book since high school, when I had crushes on authors and, like a groupie, wanted the books to change me, wanted to agree with everything they had to say. Instead I’ve written a weird psycho-sexual confession/rant about the state of public education. Ha!

Back to East of Eden…

I’ve loved Steinbeck before: Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, Travels With Charley (okay – so I wasn’t really crazy about that last one). But once Oprah made East of Eden a part of her book club, I delayed reading it. Call me a snob, but there’s nothing more cringe worthy to me than having a big ‘ole Oprah seal on your book. It just makes my blood boil that the American public is so dumb that they need Oprah to put a literal seal of approval on things before they purchase them. But then again, at least they are reading – why should I get a bug up my butt about how they found out about the book, as long as they found out about it. I certainly can’t expect that all people like the library as much as I do. ANYHOW, the pretty Steinbeck Centential Edition of the book came out sans seal, reminding assholish elitists like me that they’ve been meaning to get around to it.

I won’t snore my readers to death with a lengthy discussion about the book here (plus, I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who’ve not read it yet), but I want to read it again and again. I want to join some sort of discussion club about it. I want Shaun to hurry up and read it already so that I can talk endlessly about what I believe to be a distinctly American preoccupation with “being good” and how this preoccupation has infiltrated a whole slew of our cultural, social, and political actions. I want to talk about the pages I’ve dog eared. I want to talk about brotherhood and how much of my brothers I see in Cal and Aron. I want to talk about the meaning of Timshel and how it just might have the power to change the world. I want to know about forgiveness. My copy needs to make its way to the library this weekend, but before I return it I want to buy a copy for myself. I finished tonight, but I’m not done. Not by a long shot.

Before I sign off for the evening, I wanted to put here a quote from the book. This isn’t an excerpt that is integral to the book, or even one of my favorites, but it defines something I’ve been seeking definition to for a while. Last year in Scotland, I noticed the nuances of my nationality for the first time, just by the very fact that I was not Scottish. I came to realize many things about what it means to be an American, many of which Steinbeck’s wise character Lee explains in Chapter 51:

All colors and breeds of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It’s a breed–selected out by accident. And so we’re overbrave and overfearful–we’re kind and cruel as children. We’re overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We’re oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic–and do you know any other nation that acts for ideas? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That’s what we are, Cal–all of us. you aren’t very different.

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Who else is in love with East of Eden? Also, I’m thinking of compiling my ideal required reading for high school students. Any suggestions?

::Random Tangent::
Xanga peeps! Just wanted you to know that I’m reading blogs spurratically, but not having the time to comment as I’d like to. The winter term is just kicking off at work, and it is hard to start a new job at the busiest possible time. Next week things should slow down significantly, which I’m really looking forward to. Just wanted to say: keep up the thoughtful posts!

Adam said, “When do you think you’ll get around to telling me what happened to you?”
“Nothing happened to me,” said Lee. “I got lonesome. That’s all. Isn’t that enough?”
“How about your bookstore?”
“I don’t want a bookstore. I think I knew it before I got on the train, but I took all this time to make sure.”
“Then there’s your last dream gone.”
“Good riddance.” Lee seemed on the verge of hysteria. “Missy Tlask, Chinee boy sink gung get dlunk.”
Adam was alarmed. “What’s the matter with you anyway?”
Lee lifted the bottle to his lis and took a deep hot drink and panted the fumes out of his burning throat. “Adam,” he said, “I am incredibly, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I’ve never been so goddamn lonesome in my life.”

Following your heart home is a brave thing to do. It involves admitting to yourself that you’re egotistical, for one thing; perhaps you’ve been reluctant to ditch your life less ordinary, no matter how ill suited to it you are, because you are under the impression that people – family and friends -  have expectations of you to be a certain way. As if they don’t have anything better to focus on, as if your life means more than the simple fact that you live and breathe and love. In part four of East of Eden, Adam Trask’s scrupulously educated servant Lee demonstrated this kind of bravery. It is an unexpected kind of triumph that might be mistaken for cowardice by those who’ve never been in a similar situation.

Most people I know do not follow their curiosity to the ends of the earth as I tend to, as Lee did when he left the Trask family to set up a bookshop in San Fran. As a result, people use the curious in a voyeuristic way: they live vicariously through them to some extent. For the most part, it is harmless and welcome: I like to tell stories and people like to hear them. I keep a blog, for christsakes! And I am just a much of a voyeur as anybody. But this storytelling often creates some false image of the curious as larger than they are. The world is big and beautiful, even when its ugly (sometimes especially when its ugly) and oftentimes the teller gets more credit for that than is due.

What I wish people would understand is that my explorations of the world and of life are actually fueled by deficiency; I need to experience things in order to understand them. I can hear from a thousand different sources that NYC is an outrageously expensive place to live, but until I know my wages and create my monthly budget that barely leaves me covering my ass, I don’t fully understand. I can read the Saga of Orkney, but until I set foot on those blustering isles, I cannot fully grasp the story. My honeymoon was in Spain because I was reading and rereading For Whom the Bell Tolls when we were choosing the location. I just want to *get* things.

The upswing to this type of learning is that once I do understand something, I understand it in the marrow of my bones. It is a visceral, engaged feeling and I am able to articulate it and express it better than many. It lives in me, it preoccupies me, and spills over into all aspects of my life. I am compelled to teach it, to help others understand it. I never forget what I am able to learn and I build off of it and the knowledge lives inside me and connects to other bits of knowledge; this is the way I understand myself and the world. I don’t know any other way. When I read novels, I like to eat the foods that the characters eat. I like to visit the settings, even if they are approximations. My journal entries talk about characters as if they are people I know, as if they are me. When I tasted my first sip of Grappa while reading A Farewell to Arms, I understood Henry’s machismo on a whole new, horrible level. That shit is nasty! And he swilled it all the time!!! You have to be one tough bastard to have such a bitter signature drink.

The downside to this style of learning is that I am frequently doing things, not because I want them, but because I am curious about them. I want to know them. Oftentimes, I am never sure if I want something or not until I am knee deep in it. So far, my marriage, my cat, my morning run, my library card, my radio dial set to NPR, my Netflicks subscription, and closeness with my family and friends are the only things I am 100% certain that I want in this life. This is not to say that I regret anything. It is just an explanation of motivation.

One semester in college, I woke from a dead sleep wondering if my attraction to visual storytelling meant that I should major in art instead of screenwriting. It took me actually dropping all my classes, meeting with the dean of the art department, enrolling in all art classes, feeling a crushing dismay that I wouldn’t be writing all semester, dropping all of my art classes, and re-registering in the screenwriting program for me to know which course of action to take. A semester before graduation, I realized with the help of a few grueling internships, that I love the art of writing for TV and film and hate the industry; I had no desire to pursue a job in either field. I did, however, discover my love of writing and tutoring along the way. I just have to try things on for size. Sometimes I just say things out-loud to see what feeling washes over me, to see if I think a thing or not. I realize that this process makes me seem really flakey and I wish I could say that I’ve grown out of it. I have not nor do I know how to.

Actually, I’m not even entirely certain that most people aren’t just like me, but somehow something stops them from investigating things to the extent that I do. Perhaps these people are self doubting or have been taught to fear the world; I had a mother who taught me to love myself and the world. Fear was never a part of my upbringing.

Anyway, Shaun and I saw an amazing movie last weekend: Persepolis. Based on Marjane Satrapi’s  autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis is a coming of age story set amongst the fragmented fear of the Islamist Revolution in Iran. I’ve been chewing over this movie all week, still digesting it bit by beautiful bit.

In the film, Marjane’s grandmother is a sage, offering advice that ranges from how to keep your tits firm in old age to how to keep your individuality and personal freedom intact in the face of a rigid dictatorship. In one scene, Marjane breaks into tears at her grandmother’s house as she confesses that she wants a divorce from her husband. Her grandma merely laughs and says, “Oh. Is that all? I thought someone had died.” The grandmother goes on to assure Marjane that she is not crying because she is heartbroken, but crying because she was wrong. “It is hard to admit you are wrong, isn’t it?”, she chuckles.

It is just as hard for me to admit I was wrong to think I would find happiness in NYC. But perhaps the problem is that I was never sure that I would find happiness here – in fact, in large part, I knew it was all an experiment. But I had faith that things wouldn’t be terrible: I go into things with my heart wide open, ready to give my all and expect that the world will reciprocate. But people like to think that you are sure of what you are doing all the time, so I did my best to assure them. It is less satisfying for people to hear that you are curious about life in NYC and feel a potential for goodness there. Perhaps I am less sad that I was wrong than I am to disappoint people, to show them that side of me that makes me seem like such a flake. Also, I want to believe what I tell them: I wanted my hypothesis that life will be good in NYC to be true. And at first, I thought it would be; I see the good of things before the bad, always.

Things aren’t terrible here by any means. Nothing has happened. But I feel an isolation here that is incomparable to anything else I’ve ever experienced. Shaun admitted to feeling it too. I suspect the cause to be the toxic culture of money. While all culture of the western world feels the reverberation, the blow of greed hit NYC directly, squarely, and with unadulterated force. Capitalism screams at you here: it fills your eyes and ears and tries to worm its way into every fold of your brain. Relationships – family and friends – that define many places in the world seem to have been bruised and so irrevocably damaged by the pursuit of money in NYC that it feels like they’ve been surgically removed and replaced with a cold, steely greed. This greed is behind everything that makes NYC good and bad, it is behind the grit and the glory, it is what makes this place amazing. In a way, we are here for that greed. NYC is the heart of the publishing world and Shaun’s desire to be a part of that world inspired us to move here; we are here to make the connections necessary to move forward. I am interested in the greed and I’m glad that our lease here is for a year so that I can spend some time understanding it fully. But never has an investigation been so lonesome, so tiring. I can’t stay here for long. I get sad here. Having a good day here feels like you’ve conquered some huge force. It is exhausting. It is not sustainable. It’s just like Lee said, “I’ve never been so goddamn lonesome in my life.”

I miss Chicago and Glasgow’s abundance of independent cafes, bakeries, and shops. NYC is home of the brand name. Even when things start off indie, they become chains or look like chains or adopt such a generic look and feel to put connivence over experience. I miss being able to adore a structure’s architecture without having to find it beneath scaffolding, neon lights, billboards, and advertisements. I miss even having enough space to see the world around me properly – everything is packed so tightly here that it can feel like you’re looking out at the world through a pinhole. I miss Lake Michigan and those horrible winds that whipped off of it. I miss places where everyone doesn’t seem to be sharing the same bad day. I miss having less choices to sort through, less impossible hoops to jump through every single day. People often talk about the fast pace of NYC. I still don’t really know what that means. Because my blood thickens here, it slows. I am forever in line, waiting, waiting.
 
This is not to say there is not beauty here. There is. There are plays and museums and galleries and orchestras and divine evidence of human invention. But I am not rich. And like everything here, beauty is just another commodity to be bought and sold. I want nothing more than to go to a museum, but I cannot afford to. I want nothing more than to hide in the great halls, to bury myself in art and artifact. But at $20 a head, it seems too impossible. I will ask for a membership to a museum for my birthday. The New Museum or the Whitney, I think. I need a hiding place, a safe space.

But I am here now. I will likely be here for a few years. There are finances to catch up on, contacts to make, advancements to be had. On my wages, with the unimaginable expenses of this place, it will take me nearly a full year to pay off my credit cards on my salary. Then another year to save up enough to move. That is two years. Those are my goals. And I like my job, so earning those wages will not be miserable. While I do that, Shaun will continue to make his connections, to freelance, to establish himself at his great day job (he works for the association that binds all the university presses in the country together, so the potential for it to help get us out of here and to a smaller, university town is great). He’s been doing such an amazing job – simply being here has provided so many publishing opportunities for him. We were right about that. We are here for the greed, like everyone else. Lets hope it does not crush us before we can escape.
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How do you understand the world?

We’re three days into 2008 and life’s been busy. Lots of holiday travel. New job. Getting used to my new life in NYC. Adjusting to a new routine has never been a strong suit of mine. With as many major upheavals my life has seen, you’d think I’d be more adaptable. But I struggle each and every time to get into a groove, where I am happiest. I don’t generally like surprises.

Once my mom tried to surprise me with a trip to the circus when I was a girl. She told me we were going out for ice cream to get me out of the house. When we arrived at the circus, I was furious. I was all set for ice cream. I could have cared less if I got ice cream AND tigers doing tricks. I’ve always liked the sense that I am in complete control of my own destiny, even though I know that its only an illusion best cultivated with solid routine.

Its just hard to wait for things to feel normal, to wait for things to become routine. Because only time can make that happen. And while January marks the fourth month of my life life as a New Yorker (yuck – I think I hate that term and will never use it again. It feels weird), I feel like I only just started in earnest here. January marks my first month in NYC sans frantic job hunt, holiday travel, and manic fits of alternately loving and loathing NYC (which I must remind myself that I feel upon moving to every place I’ve ever moved to for at least 6 months). I think I’m really going to like my new job at the writing center, but I started at
their busiest time and I feel like a pesky cat underfoot, all in the
way with my clumsy learning curve.

Anyhow, my main resolution for 2008 is to try to be patient with the city, with Shaun, and with myself as I settle into this new life. I am really hard on myself. Trying new things, reinventing your life in particular, is bound to dredge up insecurities and other nasty little doubts. So I’ve got to hold fast to my happiness and trust that I’ll get used to this place, this strange new life. I always have. And I’ve always liked it too.

We spent the weekend closing out 2007 in Baltimore with some of our most favorite friends in the world. Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, a version of the telephone game played with drawing, posing as townspeople for Jessie’s master’s stop motion animation film – uncomplicated, pure fun was had by all. It felt good to laugh so much. And Baltimore is darling.

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I ate a pizza with crab, pesto, and love here. Now craving it nightly.

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Beth and I are pretending to ride bikes. I am making the funniest face I think I’ve made in some time.

Here, Shaun makes the face that never fails to crack me up.

There were lots of cute little shops scattered around the city. I wanted mainly everything in this one. It was a very girly time, complete with perfume sniffing. I rarely have those type of moments and I nearly forgot how fun they could be.

This is an ecstatic mannequin.

I leave you all with this tranquil picture, taken on a pit stop in Pennsylvania last Wednesday, on our way home from spending holiday time with family in Michigan. Its sort of achingly melancholy in a way. Not to be lame, but I kind of feel like this picture. Okay, yes. It is lame to feel like a picture of a waffle house. But there’s something detached, indulgent, yet pretty in the colors, shapes, and depth of feild in this photo – something that I can identify with at the moment.

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What was your favorite thing about ringing in the new year? How do you handle transitions?

Also, this Steinbeck book, East of Eden, is changing my life.