The Cruellest Month

I have long loved T.S. Eliot. As a young bookworm and self-proclaimed ailurophile I could recite passages of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats from memory and sang along to my parents’ LP of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s spectacle of kitsch at the top of my small lungs. I even won over the judges of my middle school’s annual public speaking contest with a spirited interpretation of “Jellicle Cats.”

Thus in 9th grade, when it came to write a research paper on a British author, there was no other choice but Eliot. My innocent little heart was a bit crushed to learn that Eliot was a bitter anti-Semitic ex-pat brooding in the London gloom for most of middle age, and he did not qualify as a “British Author” for English 1.

“But what about the cats? The cats are so cute…?” Ah, dear child, so much you have to learn.

There began the litany of tortured artists I was to study as I worshipped at the altar of the Canon. I knew that I’d run into Eliot later in life, and didn’t relish the prospect of getting to know this jerk—his library section looked really long.


Years later, I vaguely glanced “The Waste Land” from my roommate’s British anthology class, but the slew of Milton references and monstrous polyphony of voice didn’t intrigue me and felt overblown. I did note the famed opening passage, as most readers will:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land.

In previous poetical parsings my interpretation did not reach far.

“Why, April is delightful! Everything is fresh and growing! How ever could anyone not like April? The grass is green and bulbs shoot out of the winter ground!”

Ah, dear child, so much you have to learn.

The cruelty of April comes in the lines to come:
…mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

If only one could stay warm in forgetful snow and not confront the possibility of new growth or the memory of last year’s garden in bloom.

Last spring I effervesced about the sense of burgeoning possibility in my life—I expounded at length about the excitement of being in the gardens in chilly March and imagining what the new leaves would look like, how all those buds would eventually turn to flowers. The reality was that I walked among the cherry blossoms alone in crowds of people, missed the rose season entirely with the chaos of last June, and my free guest passes to the Botanical garden expired after a year’s worth of sitting unused on my counter.

This year, I finally got it. I ran my fingers over the tissue-thin new leaves and felt the cruel promise of April. The atmosphere conjures fluttering hope and sets me up for expectations I know will never be met. Seeing the tulips on Park Avenue and the daffodils in the park, I felt the inevitable disappointment. The pressure of work is close at hand, the possibility of finding someone to wander with me in the gardens and laze about is just about nil. There is absolutely no reason for me to be excited about spring. The full-blown rose is never as beautiful as the half-curled bud, no matter how you wish it would be. Cherry blossoms and magnolias fall off and bruise with the slightest touch—they aren’t made for vases. Sure, you can lop off the whole branch if you really wanted, but that’s just cruel to the tree.

The problem is that on a brisk sunny day with the scent of cherries on the spring breeze and baby leaves on my fingertips, it is impossible not to feel optimistic. I have decided that even with Eliot’s scorn for April’s cruelty, I will put myself at her mercy and give in to her whispered promises.

The half-furled rose will always be more beautiful than rows of thorny bushes in midsummer, but the warm air carries the scent better. If you walk with your eyes closed and brush by the petals (carefully!), I think it smells even better than the lilacs of spring. So I will sit alone on a bench at the end of the Esplanade and watch other people shake petals from the trees onto their paramours, skip the festival and take pleasure in the less crowded corners of the native plant garden. I will wait out this month of maddening renewal, let myself love the stirrings of the spring earth, and try to keep my roots safe until the weather warms up a bit.

I will always love the simple Jellicle Cats of my younger days; as I learned as an adolescent, I will have those dark moods when I feel myself trapped between the idea and the reality, stuck in the Shadow. I even hear the smoky coffee spoons of pathetic Prufrock on tedious afternoons in an office. But no matter how it mistreats me, I can’t bring myself to think of April as part of the Waste Land.

Laying Low

The return of reliable high-speed internet, among other things, has somewhat diminished my desire for socialization. The characters on Lost and Friday Night Lights are so much more interesting than non-committal and/or angry people I deal with most of the day, and certainly cooler than any nonexistent romantic prospects. Relationships with actual fictional characters are easier than relationships with imaginary people I haven't met.

It's been great playing soccer again, especially when I get to be a bit of a bad-ass ringer, scoring multiple goals a night. Go indoor. Too bad I left this week's game with a mild case of whiplash. Oops! The people are cool, but the late Monday night games doesn't exactly inspire socializing. It's okay, because I'm officially laying low.

Cervantes has to have surgery, which I can't really afford--another reason to keep things simple. Poor guy, he's had a rough winter with the exploding hind-quarters.

I'm having trouble motivating myself to pursue my career (such as it is), and have had quite the conundrum trying to figure out what the next step is. Well, that's really not it...I know what hte next step is, I just harbor an unwholesome dread of the GRE and graduate school applications. Aah, the familiar paralyzing fear of rejection. Maybe if I just keep out of sight, it will all just go away?

Sounds like a plan, at least for the time being.

Apparently a hot dress will not change your life.

I wish it were true, but alas my fantastic sartorial acquisitions have had zero impact on the current state of affairs.

In fact, they may or may not have brought on a blizzard, the awesome Brooklynbretta's closing (and owner moving to Vermont), my cat's rupturing rear end (with accompanying vet bills), and a series of pathetically lame and un-romantic encounters. I would be truly sad if the magic black dress has actually altered the course of human events. Perhaps we shall test the theory this weekend in dc...its powers are so strong, I don't know if I dare tempt fate.

back to the vet. Poor Cervantes. =(

Underground Fun

I am more than a little disappointed by some of my fellow NYC residents' whinings on the radio over the glass and mosaic installation soon to be unveiled at the South Ferry Subway stop this spring. I know it's expensive, and the MTA is going bankrupt, but we have *really* lost our souls when we stop giving a shit about public art.

My parents were in town this weekend (yay parents! yay culinary adventures!), and I was kind of surprised that they wanted to travel on buses instead of zipping around underneath the busy streets. "But we want to see the city," they insisted, so I sat on the M1, the M5, the M15, and the B38 like a dutiful daughter. All this bus riding, along with the GP Junior kids' investigation of the NYC underground got me thinking about my favorite subterranean spots:

1. The underground mural in the 7/BDFV passageway from 5th to 6th Avenue-- the Joyce quotes mixed with nursery rhymes layered over the gilded mosaic makes even the most jaded commuters glance up and take notice. The first summer I lived in New York, that stretch of tunnel made me proud to be a part of the city.
   
2. The advertising space in the Times Square station between 7th and 8th Avenues-- It's a pretty neat template for creative marketing. It's nothing really special, but this winter it ranked in my favorite places in the city for a few months. HBO, those darn geniuses (genii?) turned it into an interactive space by creating the. coolest. ad. ever. What seemed like innocuous street photos of the city had little microphone jacks with people telling their "secrets" as they went about their ordinary lives. Brilliant. People really did stop, stick in their headphones, and pay attention. Couples shared a set of earphones, people laughed, pointed, talked amongst themselves. I don't care if it made anyone watch the show--it was a fantastic concept. I was pissed that I was late for a meeting, otherwise I would have stayed to linger.
   
3. The Fashion Institute at the Met--You feel so special just having found the damn thing in the midst of sarcophogi, and then it's filled with fashion!
4. Oyster Bar--Old School classic NYC: alternately rude and chatty waiters, oysters from around the globe, made to order stews, dirty martinis. All it's missing is Don Draper in a trench.
   

Sure, the MTA needs to fix up the outer borough trains, get its finances in order and build the mythical 2nd Avenue Subway, but let's give them a break with the art. We need it.

The Beauty of Labels

As we all know, I've inherited some of my mother's Librarian gene, the Williamson penchant for list-making, labeling, and cataloging.

In my new-found empty time with 2 of the 3 W's no longer in New York City, I have gone back to my little blog for much-needed maintenance. A tune-up, really, and adding in a bunch of South America writing that I think we all know is never going to be published in any other real format, so I might as well make it look nice here. Keep deluding yourself, dear. Isn't that nice?

In any case, the "label" function that I didn't think served much of a purpose can now be added as part of the menubar. What's that?
"What illuminating effect could this have on my web identity?" you ask?

Good question! I can now sum up the last 5 years of my life, 244 posts to date, in useful tags relating to location, state of mind, or theme, as I choose. It even sorts by frequency. Brilliant.

I'm on a mission to see if "effervescence" beats out "amarga." Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?

Dear TAL

Dear Ira and This American Life Staff,
Love my letter and read it on the air.
thanks so much,

Thea

A tale of two t-shirts

A short homage to This American Life, the best of all broadcast journalism.

Ahem...(prep radio voice)

M was one of my two friends in high school. She was the kind of friend who would sit for two hours on the floor of the children’s section of Barnes and Noble on a Saturday night, watch me cry into a tepid latte and not make judgments about my sanity. High school and I didn’t get along well.

We were four hundred miles apart for college, and over a thousand after we graduated. For a few years life was pretty exhausting for both us; M was learning the ropes as a junior publicist and I was at the end of mine teaching eight classes of freshman English a day. Then suddenly in 2007 I found myself living in New York on M’s couch and starting a new job in the big city.

We spent a whirlwind summer reconnecting: I attended glamorous parties as her “plus one,” saw sneak movie previews, and found an apartment a few subway stops away. Life seemed to have reached an idyllic point—we were as close as we’d been ten years before, but I didn’t hate the world and This American Life started regular podcasts. What could be better?

The honeymoon ended that spring. Months passed without us talking. When we did talk, it broke my heart that it was hard to find common ground to start a conversation. I don’t own a TV and spend most of my days focused on 10-year-olds. M has to clip tabloids every morning and know who on the Grey’s Anatomy cast is sleeping together. Luckily our nerdy streak runs strong: a safe starter was always this week’s TAL.

Things improved when her company’s office moved to midtown, 4 blocks away from mine. Last Friday we were supposed to grab a bite to exchange Christmas presents. We’d been trying to meet since New Year’s, but as usual scheduling was difficult.

I called her at noon feeling peckish, and we settled on Grand Central as a destination. I wrapped up the morning’s work and waited for the signal that M’s conference call was over. An hour later I get a text: “call still on—longer than expected. sorry!” By now accustomed to the last-minute celebrity crisis, I reply “No worries,” and killed some office time on the internet looking up a song I’d heard on the “Scenes from a Mall” episode. http://www.thisamericanlife.org. Click.

Ooh! TAL t-shirts. Definitely necessary. Click, click. Type. Credit Card? Confirmation. Sweet.

My phone rings, and she’s ready.

“Hey, guess what I just bought? This American Life has t-shirts!”
Dead silence on the other end.
I try again: “Have you seen them? They’re cool…”
“I’m starved—ready to eat?”
“Uh, yeah. See you in 10.”

I walked up to the counter at Oyster Bar and grabbed a stool between my oldest friend and a grey-haired man in an overcoat and tweed cap. I hugged her hello and she slid a small cube across the bar. “You’re gonna laugh your ass off,” she sighed despondently. Puzzled, I removed the festive paper and popped the box top. I blinked for a moment at the grey shirt nestled the box until the guy next to me peered over and asked “What’d you get?”

Indeed, I couldn’t stop laughing to answer him. A full minute later I explained to him, our waiter, and the six other people staring that the t-shirt was from our favorite radio show, and I’d bought it ten minutes ago online. The old guy made a joke about amazing developments in technology and I smiled politely. “Must be some great show then?” he asked. “Yeah.”

I’m going to keep both shirts. One means that M loves me and still knows what I like, and the other reminds me of the struggle to stay friends in a city of casual acquaintances and demanding bosses. She knows me in a way that few people will ever know me, but friendship is hard work—sometimes harder to maintain than a romantic relationship. It’s good to know that I’ve got you guys helping us stay connected. That is some great show.

Thanks TAL, for doing what you do.