Weather Report

I’m back in New York, where the weather really seems to have taken Memorial Day to heart. Suddenly, as of Monday, it is summer–I mean, it really feels like summer–and I am elated. I sort of die inside during the winter, when my wont to wander and drink outside is stifled by the cold… Winter antagonizes street life and, frankly, I live to see things like golden retrievers shaved like lions (Prospect Park) and grown men constructing diaromas (Washington Square Park). There’s a Balzac quote that I love which says that the counter of a café is the parliment of the people. In which case, I would say that the sidewalks are the theatres.

I should add that spring in Park Slope was beautiful: the neighborhood’s flowering cherry blossoms made me think of pink frosted cupcakes… (Oddly, I only like frosting visually.) April and May were delicious months for me. There’s so much to love about this neighborhood…

I just got in from an abrupt rainstorm. Walking only half a block from the 7th Avenue Duane Reade to my apartment was enough to get me drenched. It was a refreshing (if unanticipated) shower, actually, and I learned something: a dress is the ideal garment for getting caught in the rain. (I never hate pants so much as when it’s raining…pants become bifurcated tyrants. A pox on them!!) One would think that I would have had this meteoro-sartorial epiphany during rainy season in Guadeloupe mais non–I’m just realizing it now.

The List

There are times when having an engineer for a father provides entertainment that other kids can only dream of: a velcro GPS holder on our car’s steering wheel, water bottle yokes fashioned out of rope, geocaching. (To be fair, this latter one was suggested by my sister.) As I have written before, my father is a man of adorable quirks.

As per tradition, my dad cooks for me whenever I am back in Minnesota; he is an artful griller. Last night we decided to have lemon-infused salmon and asparagus with a bottle of Vouvray–every bit as good as it sounds. When my dad walked in on my mom drawing up a grocery list he interjected dramatically: “No!! We have to pull up The List!”

The List?

“Oooh, you’re going to love The List,” my mom assured me.

They walk me over to the computer and proudly show me a spreadsheet that my dad has created to streamline grocery shopping. The List includes every item my parents would possibly want from our local grocery store. In a column next to the desired item (English Muffins, for example) is its location (Aisle 4). There’s also a column for them to write down the quantity. Once my parents go through selecting which items they want, they print off their list, which is reduced down to only the groceries they selected.

I am told that this has shaved minutes off their grocery runs. My dad marvels at how inefficient and haphazard my mom’s approach to grocery shopping once was. She was a real maverick with the grocery cart, let me tell you. I didn’t think anyone could tame her wild wanderings through the aisles of Cub Foods…

It’s nice to be home with my mild-mannered eccentrics.

Overheard at Whole Foods:

A child throwing a tantrum in the check-out line because he wanted Vitamin Water. Not candy, ice cream or soda. VITAMIN WATER.

Conclusion: New York kids are weird.

Geo-jewels

A news report on WNYC just described the Midwest as “the country’s midsection.” Since when did we go from being America’s “heartland”–a phrase I don’t particularly like either–to America’s “midsection?” Downgraded from a vital organ to a bulging waistline… This is East coast snobbery at its worst.

In any case, Minneapolis is surely the sparkly navel ring in the great Midwestern belly. Sort of like the way India was the jewel of the British crown. Only with less oppression. And less gin. Mmm, gin…

Sugar, bring me sugar

As you may have noticed, my blog posts on peeps dioramas and Candy Land are consistently the top traffic-attractors on Besotted Gleaner. Not because they are particularly interesting posts–I’m not especially proud of them. My family and friends certainly aren’t returning to them in times of uncertainty, mining them for their golden nuggets (or nougats?) of sagacity or anything. Rather, it is strangers who account for this heavy traffic. Random people that I don’t even know.

I can see what search engine terms bring people to my blog and I have learned this: the people love candy. Searches such as “marshmallow peeps” and “Queen Frostine Candyland” frequently direct seekers here, where candied pleasantries flow like Pez from my chronically backward-hinging head. (This all leads me to think that I should devote myself to candy writing–there seems to be an audience for it.)

On an related note, someone once searched “crazy horse gay” and came to my Medici post. (?!?!) I like to imagine the motivations that drive such searches…

*The title for this post is taken from yet another Tori Amos song.

Survival Kits

I have a weird habit of purloining spoons. Not just any spoon, mind you; I prefer the type of spoon that might accompany a demitasse of espresso (perhaps at the Café de Flore). Spoons that do dainty work: gentle stirring, maybe some light sugar transport–nothing too strenuous. These spoons are meant for the finer things.

Finer things like yogurt. (Yes, my spoon thievery is related to my yogurt obsession.)

I began taking spoons when I first got deep into yogurt, around the time I went to Florence. My first spoon was Italian, then French (stolen from a university cafeteria–a nice shallow spoon that my mouth misses to this day), then Colombian (abducted from a cafe that I frequented: I built up trust then made my move–I have no regrets). The Colombian spoon is still in active duty and has just been joined an American comrade, an acquisition from a recent brunch.

I normally carry a small spoon with me everywhere. I need to be ready for yogurt at all times. The plastic spoons that they give you at the delis here are crude instruments, too large and cheap to serve as appropriate yogurt-conveyors. I like soft, spoonable foods and want to be able to enjoy them on my terms at any time, wherever I may be.

I know that this probably makes me sound mildly crazy, but I think that we all have our survival kits. (Even Batman has his utility belt.) In addition to my yogurt spoons, I always have an emergency book with me. My mother carries Blistex and pens with her and my dad cannot be without a piece of rope. Even on my sister’s wedding day he had a small cord of rope tucked into his tux pocket.

I’m not sure which I love more: the fact that my dad carries a piece of rope with him everywhere or the expression of utter satisfaction that he gets when he finds an application for his rope. “I sure am glad I had this handy piece of rope with me,” he’ll say, fully aware of how adorable my sisters and I find this quirk.

I talked to my dad last Friday, just before he left for Kazakhstan. As we spoke, he was loading Almaty’s coordinates into his GPS, another one of his survival tools. What’s funny to me is that I am comforted by the fact that wherever Mike Doll goes, he’ll have his rope and his GPS.

Thoughts from the F Train

New York is never not beautiful to me. It was snowing all day yesterday and raining all day today but STILL New York is sublime: I love this city in all of its meteorological moods. Even if it’s not always picturesque, New York is ALWAYS cinematic.

Best Panhandler Sign I’ve Seen Yet:

“Britney’s sister is pregnant and I need money to buy a nice gift.”

–Times Square, February 7th, 2008

Moleskines

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.”

“I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not… Remember what is was to be me: that is always the point… [Our] notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I.’”

–Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook

I finally bought a new Moleskine this week. I’ve been without a proper jotting space since the end of last semester, which translates to many scraps of paper strewn about my person. I keep, if I may say it, a very nice, neat Moleskine. (In fact, this may be the only orderly thing about me.) The fastidiousness of my notes makes me look like a product of the French education system, which probably isn’t a good thing since it destroys me a little every time I have to cross something out.

I would love to keep a fantastical, unconstrained notebook like Guillermo del Toro (my notebook idol) but I fear that I lack the requisite sleeping condition (and drawing skills) to come up with such inspired monsters.

Computer-font-like penmanship is my one consolation…

I was once* a keeper of journals but this seems very difficult to me now. I can’t commit to the task (I blame New York)–months lapse between entries, each one beginning with “it’s been so long since I last wrote” and ending with a renewed promise of fidelity. I’ve had the same pretty brown leather book for two years now and it looks like it has about another year or so in it. Poor, neglected thing… Notes seem to better suited to my current lifestyle: notes from lectures, from books, to myself, etc. I just need a gathering space–I can’t be bothered to form anything coherent.

*There is actually only *one* journal that I kept successfully and that is the one I wrote while I was in Guadeloupe. (The loneliness of an island is conducive to plumbing one’s thoughts.) I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to write a better journal–my age and location were PERFECT for the task. As a 25 year-old resident of New York, I can only foresee constant (but often wonderful) interruption.

Rebel Juices

I was having lunch at the Whole Foods in Union Square today when I noticed that the young woman seated across the table from me was drinking a juice called “Mango Uprising.” Such an appellation inevitably conjures images of fruit warfare. Because it was too difficult to read my book and eat soup at the same time, I began to entertain myself by coming up with alternative names for warmongering juices. Here is a sampling:

*Coconut Coup
*Soursop Surge
*Blueberry Détente
*Edict of Nanking Cherry
*Strawberry Martial Law
*Pax Banana
(I also wanted to use banana for “Banana Blitz,” both a terrifying image and evocative of banana splits, but I thought that this would make the “Banana” character too confusing. Does Banana want peace or not?)

It’s fun to come up with your own–I recommend it–though you have to weed out the obvious ones like Agent Orange and Apricot PTSD.

PS There’s a real blog post in the wings, complete with quotes and pilfered images. I’ll probably write it tonight or tomorrow.