Stumbling forward,
published at 9:03am on 03/01/08, with 5 Comments
The stairs leading up to my office are steep. That I have an office to go to is remarkable enough, and the fact that I ascend those steps several times a week is nothing I would have imagined were I asked, years ago, “where will you be?”
I ask myself that often. I walk up those stairs, my backpack strapped to my back, my laptop and my camera weighing me down. They do weigh me down. The camera is a weight that I welcome; the laptop a weight that I accept as a continued reminder of my independence. It is my laptop, it is my camera. The laptop belongs to me, and when I leave at the end of the day, the laptop comes with me. If I never wanted to walk up those stairs again, I could. I leave nothing behind when I walk out that door. I learned that a long time ago. The camera, the camera reminds me that I am more than what is contained in this computer, more than what I churn out, day in and day out.
I walk up those stairs, with my life on my back. Walking is just falling forward and catching yourself, over and over again. I think I read that somewhere. Walking up those stairs is taking a leap of faith, over and over again, trusting that I will not land flat on my face. I could lean forward and touch the stairs with my hands if I wanted to. If I fell. But I don’t. I stumble up the stairs and plod down them, day after day.
I am on an airplane right now. Literally, sitting on an airplane, returning home, glad for the distraction of being away from home while looking forward to the familiarity of being back. I remember returning to Boston a number of years ago, feeling as though I was ready to dive back in to my life. A few years later I remember returning to New York and feeling that I was ready to attack my work with a renewed vigor. This time, I return home with as little conviction as I’ve ever had, and a sense that something must be done.
Why is it that so many people I know get so agitated so quickly?
We demand so much from the world. We must remember, on some level, the the universe is under no obligation to accommodate our wants, or even our needs. So many people I know demand so much, and are willing to toss away what they have in pursuit of something bigger. Grander, perhaps? More, certainly. More excitement. More challenge. More passion. More intrigue. Is it noble, or just fickle?
I have this discussion a lot with myself.
“What do you want to do with yourself?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not happy with where I am now.”
“Well, what would make you happy?”
“I don’t know.”
The obvious followup, that I suspect I never actually get around to asking myself, is if I don’t know what I want, and I don’t know what would make me happy, how could I possibly know that this isn’t it? But I tell myself that I know.
This is, of course, completely idle speculation, to be mused upon only, and certainly not acted on.
They say that change comes when you least expect it, so for now I will continue to strap my life to my back and stumble forward, step by step. Some day soon I hope I’ll trip, and I’ll be forced to pick myself up, and figure out which way I really want to go.
Filed under: Personal, with 5 Comments
French fries make the man,
published at 6:11pm on 11/17/07, with 1 Comment
My desktops (both the metaphorical one that sits in my computer, and the actual one, on which said computer sits) are covered in scraps of paper (again, both the virtual and the actual kinds, but I think we’re beginning to see a pattern here) reminding myself of stories I would like to tell. A year ago, a pile of these papers on the actual desk began to come together in something resembling what would eventually become yet another aborted attempt at writing a novel in a month as part of NaNoWriMo. Many people say that they have a novel in them, and many people I know have already written one, or two, or more. I don’t know that I have a novel in me. I’ve thought on occasion that maybe I could have one in me, but all evidence throughout my life points elsewhere. After all, I am the person who would opt out of classes in college simply to avoid the writing requirement.
That said, there is a scrap on my desk that reads “Write a story about: the boy with the french fries.”
So I think that’s where I’m going to start tonight.
I guess we should demand a little more of the story than just that. Perhaps we should demand context. Perhaps we should demand those things that put us right in the heart of the story. Perhaps. Or perhaps we should just jump right in and see where things take us.
The fact is, if his french fries had fallen to the ground, it really would not have made a lick of difference to me, except that I really like french fries, and it looked like he did too, and on this particular night, it looked like he was really, really enjoying them. He was sitting on a bench on the subway platform, waiting for the train to come. The display overhead indicated that the next one was due in about twenty minutes – certainly enough time to significantly wallow in misery had his fries actually taken that leap off the arm rest.
They were balanced precariously as he opened up ketchup packet after ketchup packet, tearing into them with his teeth, his arm bumping the tin of fries on each bite. I took a step toward him and put out my hand, steading the container.
“That could have been a disaster,” I said.
He didn’t thank me. He just nodded in agreement and went back to opening ketchup. A minute went by. And another.
“I really need to eat these fries. I’m about to go and drink a lot of Patron.”
This was not exactly what I had expected after saving this man’s dinner. Unexpected, but curious, nevertheless. He went into more detail, because I was clearly interested in what he had to say.
“I don’t understand. I’m going to see my girlfriend tonight, and we’re going to drink Patron, and I’m going to get wasted. I mean, she’s probably already eaten, and I’m going to have to drink fucking Patron and I’m going to get hammered.”
I suggested that maybe he didn’t need to drink the tequila. That, perhaps, he could stick with the beer that he’d been drinking. I mean, he had been drinking, right?
“Yeah, maybe five or six beers. And that’s the thing. I’m going to have a beer, and then for every beer I have, she’s going to have a shot of Patron. And like, seven or eight shots later, and she’s the one taking care of me, and I’m the one that’s wasted. I don’t understand.”
I realized that it was probably not worth explaining that the fact that he was drinking, and not eating, and that the french fries were the only thing resembling food in his system at all, and that his girlfriend, by his own admission, had probably already eaten dinner already, all might contribute to the fact that he would get completely loaded and that she was going to be fine. Instead, I offered up what I can only describe as an attempt to relate to a drunk person while being completely sober.
“Girls exist to fuck with you, man,” I offered. “That’s all. They’re just there to mess with your head.”
I thought this was a good response. It positioned me on his side of the equation, while offering a sweeping generalization that clearly could not be disputed.
“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Ah, dissension.
The voice belonging to those words in turn belonged to a young woman who was sitting on the bench next to the young man with the french fries. She had been buried in her magazine, doing the crossword puzzle, but had been listening in on our (incredibly boring) conversation until this point, and finally felt the need to inject her opinion into the conversation. I, in turn, did what most men will do when confronted by logic from the opposite sex: I back-peddaled.
“It was a joke,” I responded. “In fact, I’m heading home now because I was hanging out with my girlfriend but she sent me away because she wanted to have some real fun.” With these statements I hoped to show that while I was capable of maintaining a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, I was also comfortable enough in that relationship to understand exactly how things are supposed to work between boys and their girlfriends, thus gaining the respect of the woman who at this point believed that I was just a dickhead. I looked across the bench at the woman and our eyes exchanged a glance that said: “Besides, this guy is wasted.”
“Maybe you should have eaten dinner, first,” she offered. Precisely what I was thinking! I liked this girl already. “Besides, I don’t know how you can drink beer. I can drink alcohol as much as I want, but once I have a beer I get completely drunk.”
The young man with the fries thought about this a bit. “Yeah, you know, I can drink as much beer as I want, but if I have a shot of Patron, I am gone.”
They batted this thought back and forth a couple of times before the young man sitting next to them, not being able to sit on the sidelines any more, chimed in with his observation.
“I’m the same way! I’m fine with beer, but will get completely wasted drinking shots.”
The conversation carried on from there, talking about drinking, and the possibility that men and women metabolize alcohol differently. It continued on to the discovery that the young man with the french fries had just beaten a DUI charge by pleading it down to disorderly conduct, which means that he gets to keep his license but has to be alcohol-free for the next six months. (To which I say, hey jackhole, next time you’re blotto in Brooklyn, take a freaking car service the 10 minutes back to your house instead of cruising around in a Patron-fueled haze, ok?)
The girl pointed at me, and then to another young man who had just gotten on the train.
“You’re both cats,” she said, pointing at the ears perched on top of my head.
“Yes,” I replied, “but at least I’m still wearing my tail.”
And then I started taking photographs of the three of my companions, and the girl hiked up her skirt to reveal that the tights that she was wearing had “pubic hairs” sewn into the crotch area.
It was that kind of night. The kind of night where strangers will get together and talk, because there is nothing better to do when you’re sitting on the subway platform at two in the morning, and a man you don’t know has just saved your french fries and you’re about to go get wasted on tequila with your girlfriend. It’s the kind of experience that I have every so often, mostly when I’m alone, mostly in cities. It’s the kind of experience that one can have when one just decides that whatever happens can happen, that most people are probably out looking for the same kinds of things, and that maybe, just maybe, sharing a word or two with a stranger might help everyone get to where they finally need to go.
In my case, it was back to Manhattan, back to my home.
I got off the subway and saw two angels standing on the sidewalk, holding hands.
It was Halloween, it was New York City, and it was perfect.
The places we go, when we aren’t going anywhere,
published at 12:09pm on 09/02/07, with 1 Comment
I didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, but I went anyway.
That hasn’t happened to me in a long time. It used to be that I would go out with the express purpose of going out. Not going out to go back in again, but going out to be in the world, to see what the universe had to offer on a particular night, at a particular moment. As I’ve gotten older, or more busy, or more responsible, my desire hasn’t waned as much as my motivation. Motivation, not motivations. Those are still the same. The former though, the former is what keeps me in, glued to the computer or the television, and occasionally to a book. But not often enough to the latter. In fact, as another year slips by, I find that more and more of life is spent in front of one glowing screen or another, doing the things that I do to make the world a better place.
But what do I do to better myself? Alas, not nearly enough. And so, last night, I found myself walking the streets of SoHo as I so often did in the past, with no particular destination in mind, and found myself, as I so often did in the past, sitting on the corner of Broome and Greene streets, watching the world go by.
It wasn’t too late, and the streets were far from filled. That neighborhood never really gets too full anyway. Mostly people passing through, as was the one man who was looking for his car.
“I think it’s on Broad Street. Where’s Broad Street from here? Oh? Not Broad Street. One minute. Honey! Where did I leave the car?”
He walked away for a minute, and I thought about how strange it must be, walking around SoHo, with its large iron columns and cobblestone streets, looking for your car, and coming across a young man, sitting nestled between two columns on the sidewalk, a camera at his side, watching the traffic go past. Do you approach him to ask for directions? Years ago in New York City? Most likely not. But in this, the biggest small town in the world, everyone is as helpful as you want them to be.
“Wooster and Grand! That’s where I left the car. Wooster and Grand!”
I pointed him in the right direction and continued to sit.
The nice thing about not having anywhere in particular to be is that you have the freedom to not have to go anywhere. My butt was getting cold as I was sitting on that big iron step, and at that moment I had a choice. I could stay there, but shift around so my butt wouldn’t get cold any more, or I could get up and move on. The great thing is that I didn’t have to do one or the other – it was an actual, legitimate choice. One wasn’t better than the other. They both had equally compelling arguments in their favor, and it was really just a whim at a given moment that would lead me down one path or another. It’s rare in life that you end up not only with choices but with choices that have such insignificant consequences. It’s quite liberating in fact.
I ended up staying. I shifted into a cross-legged sitting position and remained on the step on the corner of Broome and Greene for a little while longer. While sitting there, I was approached by two more people looking for directions. The first was looking for a sneaker store that was down the block. The second, and older man wearing a t-shirt with a button-up shirt over it, shorts, very long fingernails and a beard, stopped to ask me if I knew where he could catch the 6 train so he could go home. I pointed him in the right direction, and as he was leaving, he stopped and turned back to me.
“I’m taking a bit of a survey. What do you think of the state of the world today?”
I thought this was quite a broad question and asked him to be a bit more specific.
“Well, what about the United States then?”
Now, the first thing you have to remember when engaging with crazy people is that, in general, they just want to talk. They have their own thoughts and their own opinions and their own stories, and they just want to make sure that as many people as possible are exposed to this information. So it’s best to just go with it, if you’re so inclined.
This particular man didn’t seem to have a particular agenda in mind. I told him that I thought that we all need to respect each other a bit more (I, citing littering, was countered by his argument about post-Katrina New Orleans, and a conversation about bottled water were about the only two lucid moments we had together). He looked me in the eyes after a few minutes and said “What’s your name?”
I told him.
“Your last name?”
Again, I told him, though in retrospect, that may not have been such a bright idea.
“I know you. I’ve seen you before.”
“Oh? From where?”
“From, from,” he stammered, and stopped for a minute. “Elementary school. Philadelphia. In the early 90s.”
The fact that I’d not been to Philadelphia until the mid 90s did not seem to deter him, and he pressed on. I was there, he told me. I was in school there. I always had my camera with me. We were part of a commune, my parents and I, and we (from the commune) went to school in Philadelphia. I told him I sounded like I had a good time.
“Oh, you did. You always had your camera, and that’s what you always said – that you had a good time. You were always at the mosque. You know people now. Famous people. Actors and artists. You know them, you’re friends with them. You all went to school together. That’s where I know you from.”
We spoke a bit more about Philadelphia. What did I say my name was again?
“Ka-”
“That’s right. You’ve got it.”
“Ka-. Ker-. Khan… Khan-Miller!”
Well, close enough.
He asked where my parents were living. Haverford? No, I told him. Downtown Philadelphia.
“I’m one of the richest people on the planet, you know? It’s because I made a motion picture when I was two. Mary and the Beetle.”
“And you’re still getting the royalties,” I ventured.
“That’s right. But I don’t get to see any of it. That’s the deal I made before I came to this planet…”
At that point I had to leave, for while I started my evening with no plans in place, in New York City, it’s rare that you can go an entire evening without someone finding something for you to do. In this particular instance, an opportunity for dinner had presented itself, and I had to take leave of my new friend.
“What’s your name, friend?” I asked him, as I was getting up to leave.
“Christopher Wynn, 1786. You know your number, right?”
I informed him that I did not.
“Your BOP number. Ask your parents. They’ll know. Christopher Wynn, the runner.”
“Oh, you’re a runner,” I asked.
“NO! The Runner. So, which way is the subway again?”
And with that, my encounter with Christopher Wynn was over. Was he crazy? Was he just out for a good time? Maybe he was going senile. He’d mentioned that he had been to a photo opening this particular night, and he was just heading home. I don’t recall the photographer’s name, but she was the lover of one or two famous musicians in her time, from what he tells me. He asked if he could come to dinner with me. I told him that unfortunately, it was a closed party, but in retrospect, it could have been the most wonderful night of conversation of my life.
I got up off my perch and headed off to meet my dinner companions. We were the last party seated for the evening and we dined on arepas until we felt like we were going to burst.
Filed under: Observations, Personal, with 1 Comment
Dear Dollar Rent A Car (a complaint),
published at 4:07am on 07/05/07, with 25 Comments
To Whom it May Concern,
I do not like to feel cheated, and I do not like to be lied to by companies to whom I have chosen to give my business. As such, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you an experience I had renting from Dollar a couple of weeks ago. On June 19th, I arrived in Charlotte, NC for a four day long trip. I had booked a car through the Dollar website and was to pick the car up at the airport. The car was available, and as was my usual practice, I informed the agent at the rental location that I would like to decline the insurance offered by Dollar as I know that between my car rental insurance and my credit card insurance, I would be covered.
It was at this time that I was informed by the agent that due to certain laws in North Carolina, I would need to make sure that I was covered for “Loss of Use” of the rental vehicle, in the case of an accident. I informed the agent that I was covered for damages to the vehicle by my credit card, but he assured me that he was intimately familiar with both American Express and Mastercard policies (the latter being the card with which I was renting my vehicle) and that they would definitely NOT cover me in the case of an accident. He recommended insurance that would cover this “Loss of Use,” which resulted in almost $100 added to my rental fee.
Of course when I contacted my credit card company to inquire about “Loss of Use,” I was informed that of course I would be covered, but that by purchasing the insurance through Dollar I had prevented myself from being covered by the insurance provided by my credit card.
I do not expect your employees to be able to make any claims about my person insurance situation. However, when I am told explicitly by your representative, an individual whose job it is to deal with these things every day, that because of specific circumstances in North Carolina, my card will not cover me, I am inclined to believe him. To find out later that this information that I received was just false was to find my trust betrayed and my wallet significantly emptied.
Between the fluctuating rates, gas penalties and insurance, renting a car is one of the most stressful parts of any travel experience. My last experience with your company was certainly a unsatisfactory one, and I would challenge you to think about how you may serve your customers better in the future.
Sincerely,
jcn
Update!
Dollar did right by me and issued me a refund for the insurance portion of my rental bill. Amazing! I was honestly not expecting anything back from them, but I must give their customer service credit for listening to my concern and rectifying the situation in a way that is completely satisfactory to me. Nice job, Dollar.
Filed under: Observations, with 25 Comments
Work-life vs. home-life,
published at 9:05am on 05/31/07, with 2 Comments
After finding myself at a job that requests that I actually spend a significant amount of time showing my face at the office, I found myself musing on the aspects of freelance work that I am actually looking forward to once I move on from my current situation (which is not to say, of course, that I am looking to move on, but simply that in this day and age, to stay at any job for more than a couple of years speaks to either your insane dedication or inability to move forward in your given career trajectory).
After college I found myself at two full-time jobs at startups followed by a brief stint working full-time in theatre, before ultimately ending up with a combination of freelance technology work and freelance theatre electrics work. Over time, this shifted more towards the technology end of work and after three years, I found myself completely burnt out on sitting at my computer in my living room, alone, every day, and ready to return to the world of coworkers, lunch breaks and year-end bonuses.
What I found, though, was that this did not jive at all with the way that my brain likes to think about work, and my working environment.
The reasons for my leaving the freelance life are varied (and probably flawed at the time, though in hindsight I would probably have done it again). One of the things that I’ve often said about working freelance is that, schedule-wise, I end up working all the time. That is to say, I can come home from dinner, see an email from a client, and I might start working then and there. Or I might wake up early to work. Or I might work my way through lunch, and forget to eat until dinner, if then.
While this “work always” mindset may seem a bit insane (and is probably what burnt me out in the first place), there is also the flip side to that situation, which is that I can simultaneously “work never.” I can take a two-hour lunch break and not have to worry that someone is banging on my desk wondering where I am. I can leave to go to meet my friends for dinner, or take in a play, or go on a photo outing and know that, as long as I finish everything I need to finish, then my actions impact me, and me alone.
As I found myself rushing about the other morning performing my morning routine, I also noticed that I do not enjoy the separation of work and home life that so many people tout as one of the benefits of having a full-time, “go to the office” kind of job. While there may be something to be said for being able to “leave my work at the office,” in practice, I find that the corollary – that I am forced to leave my personal life at home – is far more inconvenient. I resent that I am forced to perform all of my personal tasks in two chunks, one in the morning, before work, and one in the evening, after work, and that during that middle period, I do not have access to all of the things (my files, my apartment, my stuff) that make performing those personal tasks possible.
When I was freelancing, my morning routine consisted of a bike ride, a shower and then, intermixed, with working for the rest of the day, tasks such as: eating breakfast, updating my web site, doing laundry, making and eating lunch, grocery shopping, making personal phone calls, dusting my apartment, folding my socks, reading the newspaper. All of these tasks would be stretched out over an entire workday-plus, with no discernible difference between when I was “working” and when I was not.
As it stands now, my morning routine consists of a bike ride (if I can fit it into the schedule, for this takes up the largest chunk of time that can not be shared with any other tasks except for listening to NPR), breakfast, updating my web site, checking personal emails and, today, dying my hair and whitening my teeth (man, I am so vain). Note however that all of these need to be performed before I even get to the office, and though I have the flexibility to show up approximately whenever I want, that is still a significant amount of energy that needs to be expended at the beginning of the day, and a lot of my mental capacity that needs to be taken up simply by considering all of the things that I need to do before I “start the day” (and knowing that once I leave the house I am most likely not going to do any of those things that I missed until the evening).
Which is, of course, why I ended up working from home yesterday, and why I didn’t mind working all of Memorial Day this year. In both those instances, I was able to get my work and my personal task completed and was able to get a couple of hours out in the lovely, lovely summer sun at the same time.
While I recognize that I completely burnt out on freelancing the first time around (living a life solely in my apartment, without any coworkers, without the separation of work life from home life), I have finally come to realize that the lifestyle that it enabled me to live was worth all of the headaches that went along with it.
I will definitely get it right the next time around, I promise.
Filed under: Personal, with 2 Comments
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