Irene - part one

I’m standing in the bread and soda aisle. It’s Friday evening and the mayor has warned us to get ready. I am far from alone. Ahead of me is a young woman loaded up on beer and what appears to be the ingredients for margaritas. Behind me is another young woman with botanica candles and chips. I’ve burdened myself with a bag of apples, a loaf of bread, small jar of peanut butter, and the components of beef stew.

My plan for the weekend was to get up Saturday and stroll through the thrift furniture and antique shops of Park Slop and Boerum Hill in search of a bench or table or chair. Anything that is the appropriate mix of rustic and charming and cheap that will look rustic and charming but not cheap in the corner or by the door or under the window.

But since Irene is on her way and the MTA is shutting down at noon on Saturday, it looks like I’ll be spending the weekend indoors.

So, on Friday evening, I’m in the Associated Market along with the rest of my neighborhood. Buying enough non-perishables to make it through a day or two or however long these things last.

The grocery is full. Much fuller than I’ve ever seen it. Certainly fuller than I expected. The baskets and carts all taken, I am glad that I have my canvas shopping bag. Every time I drop an item in the bag I wonder if I’ll be accused of shoplifting. I try to do it with an air of ease that suggests I don’t care if anyone sees me, but just aloof enough that asks ‘I don’t think I’m shoplifting so why do you?’ In goes a bag of potatoes as I look the other way and study the cantaloupe display. The bananas all look picked over, so I pass them by. The yucca and plantains are a mystery to me so they too get left behind. A can of tuna fish goes in the bag. The mayonnaise is left behind.

My mind wanders to a near future that has me passing the days in jail waiting for a court to convene so I can clear any charges the store might level against me.

I’m surprised at how civil everyone is. Maybe not surprised, but pleased. ‘Excuse me’ and ‘can you reach?’ My neighborhood is largely Caribbean, and the mixes of English, French, and Spanish create not a cacophony but a gentle rocking. I imagine they all possess a calm from experiencing this before. Not here in Brooklyn, but in the islands. The other islands. Hopefully the gentle rocking their voices create will be the same as Irene’s.

I consult my stew list. It includes marjoram. Which I’m having trouble finding. I think it’s a spice, but can’t locate it on any of the spice racks. The store has three spice sections. The regular spices, the Creole spices, and the Goya brands. No marjoram. I make a mental note to research it online before excluding it from the recipe.

I think about buying a package of lunch meat. I decide against that and grab a can of peanuts. I bypass the yogurt and search for some hummus. Not wanting to be a cliché I skip the hummus and put a small jar of peanut butter in the “not shoplifting” bag. I’ve decided to be a different type of cliché.

And then I pick an aisle to wait in. The six cashiers scanning methodically, and the store becomes six long lines of pleasantly shopping survivalists.

Luckily I’m in the bread aisle, so I pick up a loaf. Under normal shopping conditions I would search the labels of several loaves of bread looking for the highest fiber content. I’m nearly 40, so fiber content is important. This time I’ve apparently found the final loaf of whole wheat in the store. It sits amongst a shelf of hot dog buns and raisin bagels. In the bag it goes.

And I wait. Behind the party girl, ahead of the candle girl. We make casual jokes as we stare down a display of Keebler cookies. Party girl grabs a six-pack of Magic Hat. Candle girl explains her candle choices. “They were the biggest. I don’t know who the saints are.” She has recently moved from Los Angeles and was amused by our earthquake and now concerned about Irene. I tell her that it will probably be just a lot of rain and maybe a few days without electricity. I’m from Ohio, what do I know? Tornados last a few quick devastating minutes and then the sun shines again.

But here I am at the Associated with a heavy shopping bag on my shoulder, one gallon of spring water in hand, trying to resist a box of Cheez-its. If I had landed in the women’s hygiene aisle I would have less to tempt me.

A woman with a shopping cart overflowing with juice boxes squeezes by. Candle girl and I make eye contact. “How long do you think she’s planning for?” I ask. Party girl is on her phone asking someone if they need Bloody Mary mix.

Finally I get to the register. I make small talk with the cashier and bagger, asking if they’ve seen anything unexpected. “A few things I didn’t know we sell” the cashier says. She doesn’t elaborate. I wish them well and head home to wait.

The Miracle of Mindlessness

My horoscope told me that I need to spend less time thinking about myself and my problems and more time focusing on compassion to others. In other words, get out of the waist deep, urine-filled, public pool of woe-is-me that I had been standing in. Emotionally speaking, that is. I took this instruction so seriously that I decided to try and resume some long-abandoned meditation practices to aide me in the effort.

Deep breathing is, after all, what gets me through meetings with a boss that is always concerned about her hair being flat in back. It IS always flat in back—no matter the constant fluffing—but she misses the larger issue which is perpetual lipstick on the teeth. I have to take a deep breath to loosen the chest-tightening response I have just been thinking about it.

So yeah, why not expand those deep breaths to the practice of mindfulness; to Zen focus on gratitude and on channeling compassion to the suffering. And I totally want to be one of those people. Centered. Calm. That finds the good in every bad situation and don’t waste a minute worrying about what could go wrong when things are going well.

My problem with previous efforts at meditation is that I lack focus. My mind wanders. I’ve been told that is just fine and that I should acknowledge the thought and move on. Move back to center. So, deep breath in, slow breath out and away we go.

Suffering of others. Real suffering. Not the half-assed, Gen-X-hangover suffering that I willingly flail through everyday. Who am I? Am I making a difference in the world? Could I have been a Grammy-winning country singer if I had not given up guitar lessons in high school? Would I have just developed a bourbon/cocaine problem if I had continued with guitar? B.S. Move on. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I mean how about the people I work with? Homeless, abused, marginalized and forced to jump through ridiculous hoops to access basics such as food, housing and health care. This is why my boss’ hair should not come up in meetings. I mean, really, can you take anyone seriously who comes clicking through a shelter--past homeless children--in designer heels, fluffing her hair the entire way?

Wait, no. Now I’m judging. She deserves compassion too. And her preoccupation with her hair is likely the manifestation of some sort of suffering. Move on. Deep breath in. Breathe out.

Butt crack boils. This isn’t completely random. I think of my boss working red lipstick over a cold sore and it reminds me of butt crack boils. Now that is some shit. I once knew a guy that got wicked boils in his butt crack due to working on a loading dock and sitting in the hot, sweaty, forklift seat all day. No air. No circulation. He said it was really painful and he’d just have to suffer through sitting on the oozing pustules until they healed. Ick. Breathe in. Breathe out.

But at least he had a job, right? And money with which to buy boil salve. Back to the homeless. Real suffering. Homeless babies. Homeless babies with boils. Homeless babies with boils without salve. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Oh, but what about that guy I passed in the sandwich-board, hawking some furniture store? He was taking a deep drag off a cigarette in one hand while he waved to passing cars with the other, beckoning them to stop and buy cheap, beige sofas. No money down. The sign didn’t say beige, but the store window was an oatmeal horizon without end. His face was so red and sweaty under the sun—in horrifying contrast to the store window--it looked as though his skin would come to a boil at any moment. He was at least fifty. Boiling like a lobster. Pushing bad home furnishings. Talk about suffering. Breathe in. Breathe out.

He had a job too, but a shitty job and just down the street was a woman in the same profession. She also wore an ad of some sort, but she wasn’t waving. She was busy with a bag of potato chips. She looked far less impacted by the heat and much more worked up by efforts to tear the bag open. Idling at the stop light, I observed her try and rip it with her teeth. That sucks. Standing outside, wanting nothing more than to eat your chips in peace, while some a-hole stares with pity. Move on. Deep breath. In and out.

But I get stuck on the chips. They were no ordinary chips. That lady had been wrestling with Lays Barbeque Potato Chips. Deep breath in. Shudder.

Carlos was his name and he had a cute smirk of a smile. We went out once and he came home with me. It was a fun night. He came over the next day--smirking--wanting to stay over again. And he brought me a gift: chips. “In case you’re hungry,” he said.

I just stared. What dickweed brings a girl chips? Lays Barbeque Potato chips, no less, which I don’t even like. Worse still, it wasn't even a party size bag of chips that we could share later, or that I could offer to guests once I kicked his ass out. No, it was an individual serving pack. Of chips. A mini-bite-size summation of my love life. When I had one.

And now I’m pining for stupid chip-boy. Even babies with boils find that sad.


Deep breaths turn into sighs. I’m back--in a matter of five minutes--standing in the pee pool. Hoping someone out there’s breathing me some compassion.

20 Things That Really Honk Me Off!

Channeling my inner Scrooge–as well as passing time in an all-day workshop–I have devised a list of 20 things that really honk me off. No particular order. It all gets under my skin like one of those zits you can’t pop–big, red, and painful. It’s a therapeutic exercise, really, that will perhaps pave the way for a list of 20 things that fill me with sunshine and rainbows.

1-Animal Cruelty
2-Racism
3-Most of the “-isms” (Not all, I mean, I am human.)
4-Rod Stewart
5-Hummers
6-Miscarriages of Justice
7-Raisins in cookies
8-Raisins in carrot cake
9-Disproportionate raisin to carob chip ratio in trail mix
10-Ass-kissing (The figurative kind, obviously, as the literal is context-specific.)
11-The way first class air travelers move in around the ticket person at the gate like jackals. What’s the deal? You know you are getting on first anyway!
12-Sweater vests
13-Littering
14-People that drive slow in the left lane
15-Televangelists
16-Televangelist hair
17-The Bush “Legacy” Project
18-Talk Radio
19-My monthly student loan statements
20-Kiera Knightly pursing her lips

Share yours!

Flash Quiz - Coffee

Coffee was first cultivated in Ethiopia, introduced to Vienna via retreating Turkish armies, and institutionalized in the US by a mermaid from Seattle. We describe it with terms like rich, robust, aromatic, and instant. The smell of the grounds in the can is comforting. The swirling loops and color changes caused by adding cream are transfixing.

My first coffee experiments were with my mother’s jar of instant crystals. As a teenager I drank it at a coffeehouse in Cleveland Heights. In Boston I had a tall cup every morning from a chain near my office, in New York I bought it from a man in a trailer outside Penn Station, and in France I drank it in smoke filled cafes. My first cup back in the States this summer was purchased at a gas station outside Bucyrus. Burning my tongue with the first sip, then running to the bathroom 30 minutes after finishing the cup, I love coffee.

And so, this FlashQuiz asks: What is your relationship with coffee? How old were you when you had your first cup? Is it a part of your daily life? What do you add to it? Where do you drink it?

All responses will be treated with confidentiality.