the piper

during my daily commute from work to home (i lose many hours of my life this way each week) i take the same interchange between two trains. there i encounter a man i wish i didn't hear every day. i can still remember the first time i heard him (cue wayne and garth saying doo-doo-doo-doo and waving their hands vertically).

at the fifth stair from the bottom i heard the sound of an ambiguous wind instrument playing a wistful tune. when i reached the bottom of the staircase i saw a very wise-looking man with long, greying brown hair standing in front of a bench and playing a wooden instrument that i didn't recognize.

immediately, i sized him up to see if i would give him money. i give money to people playing music for one of two reasons: either they play or sing darn well or they look like they really need the money. this guy didn't really fit into either category. his tune wandered; it fit the mental stereotype i have of hippie-new age-midlife crisis music, but it didn't appeal to me. his clothes didn't look new, but they seemed clean. he wore khaki cargo pants, a vest over a colorful sweater and hiking boots. his hair was partly covered by a woolen cap.

i wasn't so sure that he wasn't destitute or secretly playing good music, so i described a circle around the bench where he was playing, all the while listening intently to his song. when i reached about 240 degrees he squeaked, which is bad form, but forgivable considering the conditions under which he was playing. i thought about the lonely, stiff dollar bill standing in his cup next to his instrument case. at 360 degrees i was still undecided, so i watched, listened and waited next to the staircase.

that was where i discovered that the piper, as he will henceforth be known, had no clue what he was doing. there were smooth notes transitioning to smooth notes, fading into squawks. in the middle of what seemed like a melody, he made his pipe shriek staccato notes in an attempt at a light, impish tune. disgusted, i walked to the other end of the platform.

effing punxsutawney phil!

it is freezing outside. it has been exactly eleven days since phil peeked his head out of his hole in the ground, then hid from his shadow (or the hordes of reporters and camerapeople standing around him). since then, my city been windy and frigid. plus, last night it snowed! not pretty snow, but yucky, wet, pellet-shaped snow. when i looked out my window in the morning i saw people shielding themselves with umbrellas, which i found ridiculous, 'cause it's snow. then i went outside and realized that they were onto something.

next year i hope the powers that be set up a (baited) webcam to film the little coward.

reintroduction

i bet you thought i wasn't coming back, right? wrong--i thought about you every day, almost.

i didn't mean to sound so cryptic in my last post before my sabbatical*. it just came out that way because i kept forgetting to hit the button that said "publish" in the edit field for the entry that would have allayed any fears for my well-being.

apologies/excuses finished, here follows my update.

last spring my teaching contract ended and i didn't renew it, so i moved back in with my family for the summer. it wasn't nearly the disaster i had expected, but it wasn't quite delightful. i worked forty hours per week in a local business, while looking for almost any job anywhere else and applying to grad school programs. meanwhile, i was supposed to help my family move into a new house. you probably won't be surprised to learn that i failed in every one of these endeavors.

now, many months later, i'm in the city and able to plan my life in (relative) peace**. what will follow, in this blog, will be a series of posts that exist in two different time periods, now and then. i hope i remember "then" well enough to do it justice.

*has a nicer ring than abandonment
**pun

out with the old, in with the older

as some of you might know, my favorite blog no longer exists. another good one has replaced it in my favorites list, though not in my heart. dan, i like you a lot, but tcb, i love you.

bringing messy back

hey everyone! i hope you're all ready for me to continue my scatter-brained posts. life has been crazy since may of last year: i've moved four times and have begun and finished a relationship.

don't worry that you're the only ones that i've neglected--i sent out my holiday cards on friday of last week. i wished the recipients a merry christmas, happy new year and happy epiphany and still managed to be late. i'll fill you in as much as possible.

an explanation, not an apology

hi. i know it's been a while. i'm not going to use the s-word (again), so here's an explanation for my sudden silence:

all that weird attention i was getting from the opposite sex earlier in the blog blew up. and it wasn't funny.

my computer's back!

hey, i'm back and so is my computer. i don't know where to start, because my life has been so eventful since my last post. so i'll do it another day. ciao.

the scot, part 3

the scot's name is officially mud.

following a conversation with a friend about my situation with the scot, i realized that the girl who told me about his alleged girlfriend wanted him for herself. therefore, she had no reason to do me any favors and was probably lying about his purported relationship. this realization and the scot's continued messages convinced me to give him another chance.

after almost three months of failed meeting attempts, the scot and i met for coffee (tea for me). not surprisingly, he barely recognized me and things were awkward. as it turns out, he is extremely soft-spoken and shy (though no less roguish), and so, had difficulty meeting my eyes for most of our time together. it was sort of endearing at the time, but now i think it had more to do with guilt than coy modesty.

near the end of our time together, i decided to get the girlfriend question out of the way. thus, i asked, very directly, "[jealous girl] told me your girlfriend was visiting this week. where does she live?" to which he responded, without pausing, "in [large city]."

update (5/4/07): what makes this story even more incredible is the fact that he was still sending me messages a week later.

the scot, part 2

i wrote this post on january 20:

tonight i went to a party at the apartment where the scot and i first met. from across the room i spotted one of the scot's friends, a girl who wanted to be more than his friend. the night the scot walked me home, she fought me for his attention, but failed. i didn't say anything to her at first because i didn't think she'd appreciate it, but then she asked me if i was the girl the scot walked home two months ago. i told her that i was, indeed, and asked how our mutual acquaintance was doing. i already kind of knew how he was doing because he hadn't stopped sending me messages for the past couple of months. we had tried many times to get together, without success.

the girl replied tactfully, but not without a bit of satisfaction, that he'd been extremely busy lately because his girlfriend had been visiting him. i made her repeat herself, then stared at her dumbly. my first thought was: "villanous knave!" the second was: "yeah, i should have seen it coming." despite all his sweet words, the scot made less of an effort to see me than he could have and tended to disappear for a week at a time.

not long after that conversation, i left the party and was struck for at least the twentieth time by the overabundance of cats prowling the streets. judging from the long, lusty meows that my roommate and i hear all night every night, i would guess that mating season has come a few months early. tonight, i found one of the chief meowers under a car and stamped my foot at him, hoping to scare him into silence, only to find that i had interrupted a cat orgy. no fewer than five cats emerged from the underside of the car, gathered their dignity and scattered in all directions.

even the cats in this city are promiscuous.

sorry

hey,

i haven't been able to post for the past several weeks because my computer is somewhere between paris and chicago. someone owes me some money.

oh, racism

"There are still parts of the Muslim world where historical enlightenment still needs to be implemented," [Germany's Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble] told Brussels-based journalists on Thursday.

what i understand from his comment: "white is right."

*sigh*

"Beckham Agrees to Galaxy Move" why, why, why did david beckham have to wait until a year after i left los angeles to move there? i would have bought a season pass, even though i would never have been able to recognize him from any of the seats i could afford.

2007 is off to a strange start; macguyver would not approve

yesterday i managed to lock myself in the bathroom. i accidentally slammed the door a little too hard and the lock fell onto the floor. when i tried to re-attach it to the bolt in the door, i only managed to push the bolt through the door.

i tried picking the lock with two hairpins, but i needed something in the shape of the missing bolt. thus, i tried to fashion a rectangular bolt out of some newspaper in my coat pocket. it didn't hold its shape well enough, so i put the hairpins inside the paper, which would have worked (or so i'd like to think) if my makeshift bolt had been a bit longer. thank goodness my cell phone was in my pocket. my roommate was still out of town, so i called my landlady, who was in a play. i spent the next two hours sending text messages, trying to find someone, anyone, who wanted to entertain pitiful universal muse trapped in her own wash closet.

my landlady finally arrived and pushed the bolt back through the door so i could put the lock back together and liberate myself. then she laughed at me.

not really a happy new year's eve

my new year's eve was wrapped in a haze of (literally) foreign substances. of the actual stroke of midnight, i remember very little, aside from the fact that there was a lot of champagne. i spent the night in paris surrounded by unrealistically beautiful people, but despite the lovely scenery, my fete was dominated by a run-in with an ex-not-exactly-boyfriend.

i know i'm not the only girl who has convinced herself that carly simon wrote the song "you're so vain" for her ex, but i think my case is especially juste as the french would say.

take the first line, for example: "you walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht." not only did he walk into the party as though it were a yacht, the party might as well have been a yacht. he was superb, dressed all in black, fine fabrics from head to toe. the party was, in a word, swank. it was overflowing with foie gras, courvoisier and, as i learned afterward, cocaine. i was completely out of place, a gauche and un-elegant american girl among cultured, worldly young europeans.

as far as the second line of the song goes, believe me, his fedora was "strategically tipped below one eye," though his scarf was black that night. he actually does own an apricot ascot, however. i teased him about it the one night he wore it in front of me.

just like the night we met, we ignored each other for several hours. both on the night we met two years ago and at this new year's party, i ignored him because i'm incredibly shy around attractive men and he's not only attractive, but intimidating. he ignored me the first time in order to make me chase him (you can imagine how well we worked as a couple), but this time he ignored me because he didn't want to talk to me. he told me as much at the end of the party when i confronted him. i asked him very directly why we weren't talking and he replied that he didn't realize that i expected so much (a conversation) from him.

this last meeting between us seemed totally unreal, and not only because he dared tell me that five minutes of his time was too much to ask. i'm pretty sure i had a contact high from at least one of the substances being smoked at the party--i really hope it was pot. since i've never smoked anything in my life, my head was spinning throughout the party and i remember falling at one point. in addition to the atmospheric influences operating on my senses, a bit of nostalgia lent a surreal feeling to our last conversation. you see, we had never properly broken up, so this was perhaps the closure i needed.

all these elements combined to give me the impression that i never saw him, though i'm sure i did. he exited my life almost as smoothly as he entered it, though i must admit I cried after the party.

among all his harsh words (i gave you the short version), he did manage to slip in a compliment: he likes my writing. he wants to keep receiving emails from me, not because he wants to know anything about me, but because he thinks i've got style.

Happy New Year!

speaking (blogging, rather) of food-related names that double as feminine first names, i went to see the movie paprika tonight. what a weird film. it's an animated japanese feature about scientific dream manipulation. think eternal sunshine of the spotless mind without any of the physical constraints that live action places on characters' movements, but also without lovable characters. one element of the film that worked especially well was its suspense. when i was supposed to be scared, i was. i can't say that i recommend the film. it was interesting, but i won't go out of my way to see it again.

oh, my darling clementine

one day about a week ago, i noticed that my nails were a funny yellow/orange color. not being easily alarmed about my own health, i ignored it and hoped it would go away. two or three days later, i started to worry. optimistically, i tried to attribute my yellowness to my carrot intake because i once knew a girl who ate so many carrots her hands turned orange. but i knew that i hadn’t eaten any yellow or orange vegetables in the past couple weeks, and then, not enough to cause discoloration; besides, my palms were perfectly normal. then, i thought, what if i have jaundice? panicked, i ran to the bathroom to check the whites of my eyes. to my profound relief, they were still white. since the only place where i noticed the strange discoloration was on my nails, (and only between the tip and the cuticle) i knew that the villainous stain culprit must be something i spent a lot of time touching. but what?

i thought long and hard: i knew it couldn't be the yellow chalk from school or my yellow/orange pen because i don't use them very often. none of my clothes are obnoxiously bright yellow and i don't do manual labor with anything yellow. all at once, i realized: it must be the four or more clementines i'd been eating per day. my clementines of choice are not those itty bitty american ones, but the big, juicy, technicolor-orange, spanish variety. by peeling them manually, i must have been staining my nails orange/yellow. cue the huge sigh of relief. thank goodness nothing was actually wrong with me.

i'm not going to stop eating clementines because of this little scare. my friend p thinks that i should at least slow down, but in my opinion, living with stained nails is a small price to pay for the incredible amount of vitamin c and flavor, not to mention joy, that each clementine brings me. plus, i might be a little addicted.

success!

i had such a good time with the kids yesterday. we watched "another brick in the wall" by pink floyd and they had to figure out the lyrics, historical context, etc, yadda yadda, educational *yawn*. but they loved it! and i was riding high all day until one kid pointed out the parental warning on the case and that it might be illegal for me to show it in school. ah well, it's not like anyone is going to sue and i'm not a real teacher, so i can't get in too much trouble. i've never had a class beg me to let them sing before. i can't wait to do "magnificent seven" by the clash with a group. best call and response song ever.

ewww! i almost became meredith

yuck. a friend of mine pointed out that my situation is strikingly similar to "grey's anatomy", but i have no desire to be meredith.

he really didn't get it

i talked to the loup again yesterday. as part of thursday's plan to avoid openly rejecting him by seeing him with large groups of people, i had invited him to hang out with some of my friends last night. i almost cancelled after friday's debacle, but i wanted to give him one more chance to catch my drift before i severed all personal ties with someone that i have to see quite often. although i knew i was taking a huge chance, i had enough faith in the loup to let him pick me up last night, thinking the car ride would be the best time to talk seriously about "us".

that didn't end up being the case, because we got lost on the way to the restaurant. however, on the walk from the car to the restaurant, i brought up the delicate subject again. first, i asked him if he understood yet what i tried to say friday night. of course, he said "no," so i repeated what i said on friday. he gave me the same blank look i'd already seen three times, so i changed ploys. this time i connected the fact that he was married to the possibility of something happening between the two of us and my consequent discomfort. at last, i saw a light bulb turn on. you've seen it happen: the person inhales sharply and suddenly straightens up while widening his eyes; then he lets out a several-second-long "ohhhhhhh" that rises, then falls. i think i'm going to call it the "crescendo of realization" from now on.

once he'd crescendo-ed, he chose his words very carefully. he told me that he liked spending time with me and didn't consider himself married anymore, but that he didn't want to make me uncomfortable. i re-iterated my point that we couldn't spend time alone and he looked at me very sincerely replied said that we would do whatever i wanted.

in the first decision i've made with him that i'm sure is intelligent, i cancelled my plans with him for today. i feel like i accomplished three things last night: 1) i communicated my problem to the loup, 2) i introduced him to the most social person i know--he doesn't see many people now that his wife is gone--and 3) i made sure that i'm in control of the situation. scary.