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Dear U-Turns

13 Jul

Dear U-Turns,

The thing about Southern California is its wide streets. No, avenues. The thing about Southern California is its wide avenues. It really does have them, palm trees lining the partition down the middle if you’re on Coronado, palm trees lining the ocean, palm trees lining the sides of the neighborhood streets.

The thing about palm trees is they have shallow root structures, so when the wind blows, they topple. I once saw a house with a palm tree leaning against it, lazily, posturing, like a teenage girl against a locker.

The thing about palm trees is they’re fairly light, so the roof was intact. Imagine having a tree fall on your house and there not being any damage. Imagine walking outside and setting the tree upright and pushing in some soil around its base like it’s a new gladiolus, and saying, “There, there. It’s all right. I forgive you. Just try to fall the other way next time, ok?”

Wide avenues invite u-turns. They invite abrupt changing of one’s mind, one’s direction, one’s destination, they invite you to park in that open space, even if it is on the side of the street where you are not, because in a moment, with a wide sweep on the wheel, you can and will be.

Perhaps this speaks to the way people in Southern California are changeable, shiftless (two words that don’t make sense together, one indicating changing states of matter, the other a lack of will or energy to change, and yet). It used to be no one was from here. Now, everyone is from here, but not from here: that is, everyone is from California, but slightly north and east of here. Or they are from Arizona.

In Seattle, there are no u-turns. They’re illegal everywhere, and besides, the streets are too narrow. This is why everyone parks facing whichever direction they happen to be facing, whether their car is facing the right direction or not given the side of the street that they are parking on. This is not illegal in Seattle, or maybe it is, but no one cares. It’s a matter of necessity. I did a u-turn once in Seattle and felt a thrilling sense of lawlessness. Even at four-way stops, of which there are many in Seattle, no one does u-turns. A car in front of me once did and I felt outraged. I felt an outsized sense of anger on behalf of the stops that had been left behind.

This is because people stop thoroughly in Seattle and wave one another through the four-way stop, no you go, no after you. This superfluous politeness is maddening and endearing. The exception to this etiquette is the four-way stop at NE 41st St and 48th Ave NE, where everyone rolls right on through even though it’s near two blind hills and is at the corner of the park. People still stop for dogs there, though. Everyone likes dogs.

Or at least, no one wants to hit one.

But in Southern California, when a car abruptly and without signaling begins to arc in front of you, to draw a parabola, to establish their personal and directional freedom, to assert their right to change their mind, their course of life, their career, their yoga position, their eating habits, their religion, their allergies, their self-identification, to suddenly manifest their destiny right there at the very edge of the westernmost coast, you slow down, and you wait, and you think about whether or not you, too, ought to do a u-turn, because that wide avenue invites you to, if you would in fact like to do so. Take up this expanse, it says, lay your rubber all over my surface, establish your space, your personality, your borderless existence at the edge of the ocean. You instantly and abruptly forgive all u-turns in Southern California, because you have just done or are about to do the same, although you still might wonder why it is that we don’t have a signal on our bumpers to indicate such a thing. That would seem safe and precautionary.

Warning, it would say, forgive me, I am going somewhere else now, I have somebody else to meet or be.

The thing about palm trees is that they watch everything and they are constantly applauding.

MM

Dear Time and Space Travel 3

11 Jul

Dear Time and Space Travel 3,

Let’s get the horror over with first: the Washington, DC fireworks, that is, the national, official celebration of ‘Merica’s birthday, and democracy, and freedom, and the right to tan as much as you want and swear and find love on tv, only lasted fourteen minutes. 

Some possible explanations:

A) they forgot to light a crate that was stashed under the right thigh of the Jefferson memorial. 

B) fireworks shows are really expensive and they were exercising budgetary restraint and solidarity with the common man, the way celebrities don’t wear as much jewelry to the Oscars during times of recession. (This is BS. If you’re wearing a couture gown that cost more than the down payment of the average house in a mid-size city, you can afford earrings, which in fact are lent to you for free, and the rest of us do not admire you for your restraint, we yell at our tv’s, because you’re supposed to be our escapism, dammit.)

C) Congress sets the budget for the city of Washington, DC, and all the congresspeople went home to “real” America, where their small towns set off 1.5 hours of fireworks and brought in choreographers from Los Angeles to direct the high school marching bands in Fosse-like spectacular arrangements. This is a convincing argument if I’ve ever heard one for making DC a municipality, or territory, or colony, or monarchy, or whatever it is those proponents of that thing want. Even Seattle, which is notoriously environmentally conscious and has really strict noise ban laws (it’s illegal to honk unless there is immediate danger) and generally is so hipster they can’t get excited about anything unless it’s ironically, has a longer fireworks show than this. 

Ok. Well. Now that I’ve killed all your hopes and dreams, let’s talk about what else happened over the fourth of July weekend in Washington, DC. 

It was Folklife and I listened to Motown and watched some men cut up some watermelon and took some terrible photos:



Someday we’ll talk about how I lose all fine-motor skills the minute I’m holding a camera (even if that camera is my iphone, which the internet assures me even an idiot can take pictures with). 

In the meantime, I also saw the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and I exercised saint-worthy strength by not grabbing the vuvuzellas out of the hands of the pre-teens in line in front of me and whapping them across the heads with them. 

At the Freer Gallery, I saw Whistler’s nocturnes, and also his paintings of British ladies dolled up to look like Japanese ones. Because, duh. 

Later I ate tapas and went dancing. Like I said, the trip was horrible and I will never go back because it involved so many terrible things. 

Saturday I took a nap. I think I also went to the farmer’s market and talked a lot about buying sparklers and went to hear a band play and had a great cocktail and played miniature golf and basically set new records at Skiball? But the nap, you guys. The nap was SO GOOD. 

Sunday I went to the newseum, where I had to leave the exhibit on Pulitzer-prize winning photographs because it was making me cry (I needed a nap), and then took a nap during a thunderstorm and ate Salvadorian food while a dubbed “Blue Streak” played in the background. Martin Lawrence transcends language, you guys. You should have heard the mustachioed men laughing. Again, I thought about buying sparklers and talked about it frequently and still didn’t do it.

Monday I started to go back to the newseum, but got sidetracked by a sandwich, but then made it to the newseum, where I managed not to cry through the Katrina exhibit and very purposefully skipped the 9/11 exhibit and then I went to the Library of Congress, which is beautiful and has every book in the world ever, stored someplace where you can’t see them so they won’t distract you from the beautiful ceiling and floor. I’d show you the picture I took but it’s untenable, it’s so bad.

Then I went to Virginia. My stalwart sandwich-sharer had promised me I would not set foot in Virginia during this trip (mostly as a way to bring up the fact that while the Reagan airport is surrounded by Virginia, it does not rest on VA soil, as VA gave the airport land back to the DC sometime after George Washington kissed Martha for the last time and also sometime after airplanes were invented, if you insist on narrowing it down) (I was a history major, don’t try this kind of historical accuracy at home).

So he lied and I set foot in Virginia, which was fine. I mean, I didn’t experience any kind of world-shattering epiphany and I also wasn’t devastated, which was why I chose the word “fine,” meaning what it means, that is, “ok and stuff.”

Then it was hot and I got bit by some mosquitos and I tried to buy some sparklers off some kids, who were so busy being bratty they weren’t even watching the fireworks show their dad was putting on for them. In contrast, I pulled my lawn chair right out into the middle of the lawn and blatantly turned it to face their barbecue instead of my own so I could watch. I mean, COME ON. Fire and explosions and colors and whizzes and bangs! And no, they didn’t sell me any sparklers. The situation was getting desperate.

Then, you know, that thing-which-must-not-be-discussed (refer to the top of this page). I mean, guys, I don’t want to make DC feel bad or anything, but even short Ted talks last longer than that. 

Let’s just say it renewed my desire to take my fate in my own hands and light my own sparkler. Cough.

So it’s ten o’clock at night, because the fireworks started at 9:15 and we sat around for 36 minutes after the show ended, talking about how we’d already been sitting around after the show for longer than the show itself lasted. I went to the bathroom and bought some fruit snacks out of a vending machine and talked about how that adventure took me longer than the fireworks show. 

Then we got in a taxi to go home, which was surprisingly short because we miraculously avoided all traffic, but it still took longer than….you get the idea. So then I decided that I need sparklers, and I needed them NOW and also an ice cream cone, some fried chicken, and some watermelon. It’s possible what I really needed was a nap. 

But, lo and behold, my fried-chicken/ice-cream/watermelon/sparkler-procurer procured all of those things. What, you don’t have one of these people in your life? (So the guy at the fireworks stand sold me the sparklers his wife had set aside for herself. He said, “There’s one missing from the pack, so I’ll sell it to you for half price.” She said, “Yeah, I used it. Those were going to be mine!” He said, “Woman, you got all the sparks you need right here in me.” She snorted doubtfully and I clutched my sparklers to my chest.)

Then the sparklers wouldn’t light. Tragedy was nigh. I tried to put on a brave face and disguise my grief by eating more fried chicken and involuntarily screaming every time someone else in the neighborhood lit off a rocket. But by almost burning the porch and by extension, the house, down, the fire got hot and the sparklers got sparked and I got my own private show, for the approximately 3.42 minutes that sparklers last. 

Updated impressions of Washington, DC: I take impressively bad pictures and am surprisingly good at Skiball.

Soon: a comparison of U-turns in different cities I’ve been to and some wild generalizations about culture from said comparison.

Yay!

MM 

 

Dear Time and Space Travel 2

8 Jul

Dear Time and Space Travel 2,

The last time (yesterday) we left our intrepid heroine (me), I had not *really* spent any decent amount of time on the east coast. This spring, I took matters in my own hands, and I stubbornly closed my eyes to the departure and arrival times (which indicate the 5 hour plane ride) and I left sunny California for New York and Washington, DC. In March. For spring break.

As I told people, “Yes, I’m doing spring break wrong, but I’m doing life right.” They really appreciated hearing that. You should have heard the way they laughed stared at me with a mix of hatred, blankness, and annoyance. Anyway, I spent five days in New York, where it was cold but sunny, and four days in Washington, DC, where it rained the whole time. PAR-TAY.

Updated New York impressions: Manhattan is ten degrees colder than Brooklyn, it’s not worth it to walk across the Brooklyn bridge, particularly if you already have blisters, the MoMA perfected a particular brand of museum torture by having a display of chairs through the ages which you obviously cannot sit on, the Whole Foods on Union Square should be avoided at all costs, Korean tapas are delicious, Priscilla Queen of the Desert has exactly as much glitter in it as you could possibly want, and mafiosos really do run the pizza parlors.

Look, traveling is exhausting. I get that. You’re always on the go, you do way more tourist things than when you live in a place, you wait in more lines, you’re overstimulated and half-lost and under-rested and you are always, always, either under- or over-fed. But New York is the one place I’ve been (a list which includes Rome, Florence, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, San Francisco, Los Angeles) where it feels like it would be as tiring to live there as it is to visit. These impressions are half-baked. What can I say. I really liked it, and I will go back, but I totally think the only way to do is have friends there who you can go visit and who will keep you from feeling like you have to see everything and do everything. I recommend, in fact, spending some time sitting in a kitchen late at night making tea and talking about boys and reading in a sunny bedroom in Brooklyn until wait too late in the morning before you even pretend to venture out. I’m not going to tell you exactly where I ate because I can’t remember it’s none of your business.

Updated Washington, DC impressions: it rains a lot there.

*
No? That’s not sufficient? Ok, well: there is a lot of black clothing. 20somethings really do go on awkward first dates and spend the whole time outlining their resumes for each other. While wearing black clothing. While it rains. I was at this restaurant, waiting for a table, and I went to the bathroom. When I came back these two people about my age were standing near my dinner date, and the conversation went like this:

Girl: I like my job, I really do, I’ve enjoyed my time there, I’m just not sure that being an office manager for one of the busiest DC firms is going to keep me challenged blah blah blah…

Me: “I’m really super awesome at my job. Too good for it, really. Because I’m so smart? Smarter than you are, probably.”

My dinner date: Shhhh, they’ll hear you.

Boy: Yeah, I know when I was working abroad…

Me: “You know, in Germany? At the Embassy? Did I tell you already I speak four languages? I didn’t mention that? Also I’m a doctor.”

My dinner date: You missed the part where he told her he speaks Arabic. That happened earlier.

Me: …..wait, really?!?

Me: I can do it too. Did I ever tell you about my internship? I liked it, I just wasn’t sure that it was where I needed to be at that moment? You know, with how I can speak Spanish sort-of and know how to sign the alphabet? Also I don’t really like to talk about this, but I should mention that I won a grocery store contest in the 3rd grade with my drawing of a snowman.

My dinner date: Please stop talking.

Girl: My black coat is blacker than your coat.

Boy: My black shoes are from Portugal.

Hostess: Your table is ready.

My dinner date: Oh thank god.

It was like seeing a black squirrel and finding out they really do exist! (But that’s a story from this most recent trip.)

In addition to seeing the local dating scene, I also went to the Smithsonian. And by went to the Smithsonian, I mean I visited some museums because apparently they are not all in one place that is called the Smithsonian? The place that appears to most often be called the Smithsonian looks like it belongs at Disneyland and is a glorified information booth, maybe. I say maybe because I didn’t go in there. Bill Bryson has some great thoughts on this separation of dinosaurs and airplanes in his book The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, because trust me to have read about things before experiencing them, even those things are as nerdy-oriented as museums.

So Bill Bryson is pissed that they split the museum collections up because when he was a kid, it was like a treasure hunt. You’d be toodling along, scaring your brother with an ancient mask you totally were not supposed to be touching, and you’d come around the corner to find a Boeing 737 parked in the middle of a battle between the pioneers and the Native Americans and your brother would be holding Julia Childs’ favorite spoon. So I was prepared to be disappointed in the museums’ neat organizational structure. And no, I don’t remember why Bryson visited DC in the middle of his book about finding the last perfect small town in America.

Anyway, I skipped the Postal Museum, so I can’t tell you what that’s about. (What was I thinking?) Also I never made it to the Spy Museum, which I am genuinely aggrieved about, because duh.

I can tell you that in the Natural History Museum, I was reminded of the fact that I never had a dinosaur phase. Not remotely. I’m not even sure I could identify a T-rex. I also was never told as a child, “Look with your eyes, not with your hands,” a phrase my dinner date/museum companion seemed intimately familiar with. He also made me go look at the precious gems, which I didn’t give a hoot about (boys, am I right?), and we sort of zipped past the elephants, because I like elephants, but I like ‘em alive better, and through the orchid exhibit, which smelled nice.

We whizzed through the Hirshhorn Museum, because my feet were still hurting from being at MoMA two days earlier and how much modern art can a girl look at? Later I went to the National Gallery of Art, and while I’m looking for what exhibit I saw (I loved it! It was fantastic! I have no idea what it was!), the internet instead tells me that “Gift shop is first-rate, too” and now I’m just disappointed I didn’t go in. What was I thinking?

Then I went and dawdled through the American History Museum, which I kept trying to leave, but I couldn’t. I mean, I had to look at the all the First Lady fashions, and Dorothy’s shoes, and that boat that seems to be in there for no particular reason, since we didn’t win that battle anyway and it appears to have sunk in the first five minutes or so, and Fonzie’s leather jacket, and the first Kermit the Frog, and the Portrait of Stephen Colbert. Did you guys know that American history is essentially a collection of pop-culture objects? Yeah, me too. I’ve got to say, I skipped the exhibition on the history of money. Although that might have been considerably quieter than the display “Invention at Play” in which kids (definitely did not do this, no sirree, I’m an adult) got to try on teflon and shoot off laser guns.

I was about to leave when I realized that half— half!— of the whole first floor is devoted to an exhibit on transportation. Transportation. Seriously. They just moved a bunch of people’s old cars and campers in there and a mock street trolley and then there are some pictures of boats. And some maps documenting all the national parks that Wilfred and Shirley drove to in that nice boat of a coupe, right there, which they bought back in 1953. Original leather interior you’re looking at.

Then I was about to leave again when I peeked in this little dark room and it was all about the history of pop-up books, and my dinner date/museum companion/absentee-at-work-tour-guide had to call me three times before I would leave, because hello, pop-up books.

Shortly thereafter, I took a nap. While it rained. I wore black sweatpants. And I did not speak in Arabic.

Love,

MM

Dear Time and Space Travel

7 Jul

Dear Time and Space Travel,

I went to Washington, DC for the 4th of July weekend. This is the second time I’ve been to the east coast this year, and the fourth time I’ve been in my life. Let me tell you about them, because boy howdy, am I from the west coast. And no, I can’t figure out whether east/west/coast should be capitalized, so I’m not going to capitalize any of them, because my shift key isn’t working quite right and that’s democracy at its finest.

The first: we went on a college tour for my older sister. I was twelve. We spent a week, I think, and went from Brown to UVA. Impressions: Brown is pretty, Tufts has really green lawns, New York is hot, Georgetown is gray and not actually part of Washington, DC and I’m not convinced I set foot in DC although I’m told we went and saw a museum or something although knowing my family it’s quite possible we did not in fact tour anything that might have required getting ensnared in traffic or long lines, and UVA, in person, looks like a brochure. Their college students look like cardboard cutouts of people wearing polo shirts. I don’t remember the other schools we saw. Mostly I have an impression of sitting on an endless low concrete wall with my dad and staring blankly while my mom and sister went on tours and actually looked around and stuff.

My parents, living on the west coast and liking our family the way they do, had taken us in August, in a blatant attempt to boil any desire to go to the east coast out of my sister. Their plan was foiled when we hit an unseasonably cool (and therefore impressively pleasant) week of weather. I’m pretty sure I still whined my pants off, but they tell me it was under 90 degrees the whole time with low humidity. (I can hear the east coasters gasping now.) …Anyway, my sister went to Berkeley, thus solidly ruining any chance she will ever wear a polo shirt in her life.

The second time I went to the east coast was two years ago when I visited UMass Amherst when I was considering going to grad school there. The highlight of that trip was landing in the Hartford airport and seeing a giant billboard that said, “Hartford…it’s happening now.” I was like, WAIT. RIGHT NOW?!? What about later? What about before? No? AS WE SPEAK, HARTFORD IS HAPPENING. Besides that, I ate at a Dunkin’ Donuts (my first), had some vegan Thai food, was really really cold the whole time, and went bowling…two towns over. I was also told that certain writers there get through the winter by going down to the (frozen) river and drinking whiskey until they fall asleep and hoping they wake up with all their toes still attached. I was like, “SOUNDS FUN BUT.” I didn’t even bother to finish the sentence. Also I don’t like whiskey.

Therefore two trips to the east coast in the span of six months is a new thing for me, and what’s more, I’m going back in a week and a half. Just in case you’re starting to feel yell-y about how clearly I hadn’t given the east coast a real chance, east coasters, untwist your panties, because I know. You’re right. But stick with me, because I actually saw some things and ate some things on trips #3 and #4.

So the rest of this week, come back for more vague impressions concerning the third trip and more detailed impressions about the fourth trip, possible explanations for why our nation’s capital did not, in fact, throw the biggest birthday party for America ever, why vuvuzelas are the devil’s horns and teenagers ought to be slapped upside the head (actually, you probably get the whole picture right there), and perhaps also declarative statements of how many times I managed to say the words “time and space” this past weekend (hint: more than 5).

lovezelas,

MM

Dear New York

27 Jun

Dear New York,

Congratulations! I am terribly, extremely happy for you.

I’d like to take this moment to think of all those who finally have been given rights that were long due. I would like to take this day to extend my heartfelt congratulations and good wishes to everyone who chooses to exercise the right to get married and also to everyone who can now choose not to get married, whatever their reasons may be.

And I would like to take this exact moment on a Monday, of all days, 9:25 Pacific Time, 12:35 Eastern Time, to think of the courthouse clerks, judges, and other employees, who a month from now will be staring down the long lines and feeling their stomachs growl and wishing for their usual lunch break. I hope the smiles are directed your way. I hope you feel blessed to be a part of this. And I hope somebody remembers to give you a piece of wedding cake.

I hold all of you in my heart today. The married, the unmarried, and those facing a difficult but rewarding Monday.

If the hot dog vendors have any sense, they will abandon their usual posts and line up outside the courthouses. Can’t you just see them, waiting in a line? Can’t you just see the wedding dresses and tuxes and vests and hipster pegged pants and hats? The bicycles, the town cars, the high heels making their way down the street? The cameras snapping pictures, the bored faces, the people making friends, the rows of hard wooden benches? Don’t you wish you could be there? 45,000 gay couples live in New York State. There’s no telling how many will decide to get married, or how many of those will decide to get married on the first day…but I bet it will be enough for a party.

Love,

MM

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