Mon | December 11, 2006
x-men: l'affrontement final
I loved this movie. Wish I had seen it in theaters. Oh well. It was good on tv as well. I think it really taps into a lot of the dissatisfaction I feel towards American society. I almost wrote my college application essay about xmen, way back when. It was a cartoon at the time.
Posted by Lily at 11:03 PM
Tue | August 08, 2006
La Échappée Belle
I got stopped by a police car last night. I broke into tears. And instantly felt that I was being manipulative, even though the tears were genuine. It had an effect on him. "I'll check your record," he said, "and if nothing comes up..." he walked back to his car.
He had previously been interrogating me—Do you know how fast you were going? What's the speed limit on this road?
"40?" I guessed. He was taken aback slightly, an indication that I was grossly incorrect. "25?" I guessed again. I had been down North Passaic hundreds of times, over the years, so it was surprising to me that I had no idea. It was difficult to think with the blinding, flashing lights and the officer standing there.
"Have you been stopped before? Do you have any points?"
It was then that I broke— while I said "no," thinking of my sister who had just gotten two speeding tickets within two months. She went to court for one of them, and got it reduced to a seatbelt violation. I was familiar with the consequences of speeding and points.
The officer went back to his car and did whatever policemen do in their cars while they have you stopped, and your license and registration confiscated. I waited, collected myself a little, and hoped for leniency. I worried because I had said I hadn't been stopped before, when actually I had been, several years ago. Would that come up and would he see that I had lied? I had said no without thinking. And I'd gotten several parking tickets over the years-- I wondered if those would come up.
"This is a warning, not a ticket," he said when he came back. His tone was slightly milder. But it was the difference between alarming and intimidating. I suppose that's the closest that a traffic cop can come to being comforting. "There's no fine, no points," he said.
"Thank you," I managed to say.
He told me to put on my seatbelt and go. At home I played literati and tried to figure out what had made me cry. I didn't have tears streaming down my face, but I definitely lost it a little. And why did he let me go? I could not help thinking, based on my very few experiences being stopped by cops, that there is a small window of time in which the officer makes the decision whether to ticket you, and you have a fleeting chance to save yourself.
Things that could help: crying, saying I'm sorry, saying "I had no idea how fast I was going" (things I said, and truthfully), being a local (he said, "Since you're from the town—").
Things that probably don't help: acting nonchalant, dismissive, or unremorseful; admitting that you knew you were doing something wrong; challenging or arguing, trying to defend, explain, or justify your behavior.
En tout cas, je l'ai échapée belle.
Posted by Lily at 01:04 PM
Thu | August 03, 2006
Chez Louis Vuitton
Quand je suis descendu du metro aux Champs-Elysés, une femme asiatique m'a approché.
«Parlez-vous Chinois?» elle a dit.
«Je parle un peu», j'ai dit.
«Pouvez-vous me rendre un service?»
«D’accord.» J'ai dit. Je n'avais rien d'autre à faire.
«Bien!» elle a dit. Un homme qui était près de nous est venu. Il a porté un manteau beige.
«Nous recherchions d'une jeune fille qui a l'air honnête.» Elle a dit. Elle m'a regardé de près, et je l'ai regardée. J'ai noté ses sourcils fins.
«Je voudrais que vous aidez-moi acheter un sac.»
«Un sac?» J'ai commencé à reconsidérer ce service, mais il était trop tard. Elle a parlé sans arrêt.
Elle a expliqué que Louis Vuitton avait une règle, selon laquelle on ne peut faire qu’un achat. Elle avait déjà fait un achat, mais elle voulant autre chose, pour une amie. J'ai pensé que peut-être c’était pour elle-même, mais je rien n'ai dit. Je contemplais la stupidité de la règle. Seulement un achat? Ne veulent-ils pas que les personnes reviennent?
Nous nous sommes assisses sur un banc et elle m'a montré des photographies sur son appareil-photo numérique. Nous avons regardé plusieurs photos. Et elle n'avait pas décidé quel sac elle voulant exactement. Elle hésitant entre deux.
«Vous voulez celui-ci», j’ai dit, en sachant peut-être qu’il serait plus cher et en voulant voir jusqu’où elle irait.
«Oui, je pense que vous avez raison», elle a dit. En fait, l'autre sac avait l'air un peu trop jeune pour elle. Je l'ai assurée que je reconnaîtrais le sac avec deux poches et une boucle, et que l'on porté à l'épaule, grace à une bandoulière ajustable.
Je fut un temps où je savait identifier chaque cellule du corps humain sous un microscope, voulais-je dire. Mais je ne savais pas les mots pour cellule, corps humain, ou microscope. J'ai seulement su comme dire, «Je peux le faire, je suis très bonne pour faire du shopping.»
Elle m'a donné 1 000 euros en liquide. Et nous avons marché au magasin. Nous avons marché pendant dix minuits.
J'ai eu une pensée, que j'avais eu avant, mais qui s'est concrétisée quand elle m'a donné cet argent. J'ai pensé qu'il serait très facile pour moi de courir avec l'argent.
Par coïncidence, j'avais économisé 1 000 euros pour mon voyage. Son sac a coûté autant que mes vacances de six jours-- des billets d’avion et la note à l'hôtel Tolbiac jusqu'à mes repas, billets de musée, carte orange et cartes postales.
En plus, j'avais dépensé tout l'argent que j'avais apporté avec moi en espèces et travellers cheques. J'avais seulement dix euros pour cet soir et le jour prochain.
«Nous vous attendrons ici», a dit son mari quand nous étions en face du magasin.
Quand j'ai traversé la rue et ils sont restés derrière, j'ai senti une ouverture.
Mais à la porte je n'ai pas couru. Je suis entré dans le magasin et j'ai commencé à chercher le sac. Pendant une seconde, j'avais peur d’oublier à quoi il ressemblait. Mais finalement je l'ai vu.
J'ai pensé que c’était fini mais c’est seulement le début. Quand j'ai parlé à la vendeuse, elle m'a dirigé au fond du magasin, où il y avait une queue.
J'ai fait la queue à la dixième place, ai observé les personnes, et ai pensée combien j'avais horreur du capitalisme. J'avais pu excuser un américain mais les asiatiques, je l'ai pris personnellement. Toutes les personnes qui ont fait la queue avec moi étaient asiatiques.
Après une demi-heure une vendeuse m'a servi. Elle a ressemblé à une employée de Walmart-- maladroite, grosse, et sans intérêt. Elle a manipulé le sac négligemment, l'a porté dans une main puis elle a frappé contre les jambes tandis qu'elle marchait jusqu à la caisse enregistreuse.
Je me suis inquiétée quand elle a pris mon numèro de passeport- j'ai eu visions de moi à l'aéroport arrètée, ou forcée de payer un impôt dû pour le achat. Évidemment, Louis Vuitton n'avait pas informé l'aéroport de mon achat- il a seulement créer un compte informatique. Mais je me suis vraiment inquiétée.
Avant que je sois sortie du magasin, environ une heure plus tard, j'étais trop fatiguée pour leur parler plus longtemps. Je leur ai donné leur sac et leur monnaie et ai dit au revoir.
Posted by Lily at 04:02 PM
Sat | July 08, 2006
The Last Day
I'm on the train ride home, away from the West Village where the sidewalks are smeared with dog shit and flies spring up off the ground at your feet. The train is moving in the direction of the setting sun. It's too bright and so I close my eyes... and see a luminous reddish orange. It changes to watermelon and then to an orange yellow. I start to think it's peach. Real peach, not Crayola peach, not that dull beigey color. Peach to yellow-orange to red watermelon and back, one color morphs into another. Dark objects pass but I don't open my eyes to see what they may be. I hold them closed so that I can follow this image that has neither depth, nor flatness.
Is it even an image? It's smears of light seen through my eyelids. Vision isn't dependent on open eyes. In fact it can be induced mechanically by closing one's eyes and pushing on the side. This creates a spot or a ring of light.
I'm at home and sitting at my computer on a Saturday night. Being at home on Saturday is no fun but being awake at night is good. Everything else is dark and there is just the black desk lamp and the screen. Joshua is online. Neither of us has anything to do and yet we're not going to do anything together. Such is the unfortunate nature of so many relationships with IM buddies and ex-boyfriends.
He IM's me.
NomadNick (7:32:58 PM): hey uIt's a step up from
NomadNick (9:34:37 PM): hiwhich was a step up from no IM's at all.
We chat. I consider taking him out of the "selfish unfair jerk" category, of which he is the only member. I decide to keep him there. A little while longer, just to be safe, I think.
I'm glad about the "hey u." But not glad about most everything else. When I go to bed I realize that for a few nights I haven't imagined him next to me. The feeling of our touching skin, that I had held in my mind, that had stayed like an after image, was gone. That lingering pulse of light had drifted across the blackness and faded into perished memory.
Posted by Lily at 01:53 AM
Tue | June 06, 2006
Steak and Eggs over Easy
One night Josh made dinner-- steak and eggs over easy with rice and black beans. While he cooked, I sat in his bed and tried to write a story about someone whose friend is about to commit suicide but she doesn't know it. His roommate Cory came over and sat in the rocking armchair, which he called the lazy boy. We chatted for a bit, but I wanted to write. I kept my eyes mostly on the laptop screen. At a lull in the conversation I put the blanket over my head and made a tent with my head holding up the blanket. At first I kept one end open but when Cory didn't keep talking, I put the blanket completely over me and the laptop.
Just after I started getting into it, Josh came and lifted a flap of the blanket. "Hey," he said. The steak smelled delicious. He put the plate on the desk by his bed.
I kept typing though, until Josh said, "are you going to eat?" I got up, took the plate to the kitchen table, and started eating. Cory was well into his meal and Josh was still cooking his own. It was impossible for us all to sit at the table because there were only two seats.
"Mmm, this is good," I said after awhile.
"I can cook all sorts of foods," Josh said. He and Cory argued over whether steak and eggs over easy is an ethnic food. Josh said that the way he cooked it, with rice and black beans, made it Mexican style. I had nothing to say in either direction because I had never had steak and eggs over easy before. They argued strangely-- they used harsh words, but said them calmly.
"You're completely wrong."
"What do you know about it."
"I know a lot more than you do."
"You're an idiot."
Cory finished eating and got up, and Josh sat down. Cory hung out while Josh and I ate.
"I was ignoring Cory earlier," I said to Josh, in case Cory was offended that I hadn't really talked to him earlier. "I wanted to work on my story. I didn't want to talk to anyone."
"It's okay," Cory said.
The truth was that I hadn't even wanted to come over. I had come on the condition that I was going to work on my story, and Josh had promised not to distract me. I guessed that he hadn't told Cory, and so I tried to explain it then.
We fought often about whether I would come over. Ideally he would have liked me to come over every other day, or every couple of days. I would have liked to come over once a week, occasionally twice, and to stay in touch through phone calls. At that point we had been going out for only a few weeks. He didn't like to talk on the phone and didn't think anything of suddenly hanging out with someone all the time just after meeting them a couple of weeks ago.
I didn't want to drop everything because I was going out with him. I had Kaplan and Josh and writing, but a lot of the time these things seemed to take away from each other, to be mutually exclusive-- to come in the wrong order. It should have been writing and Josh and Kaplan, but it was always the other way around.
For weeks after it's over I wonder if things could have been different. I replay and rewrite the scenes in my head and think how that might have changed things.
I am under the tent and he brings me the plate. "Thank you," I say, and go to the table.
"This is good," I say, after just one bite. I get up, go to him and kiss him on the neck. Back at the table, Cory and I eat for awhile, and make small talk. At a pause in the conversation, I say to no one in particular, but ostensibly to Cory, "Josh is so wonderful."
Josh hears and Cory is surprised. "He's so cute. He cooks, and cuddles," and I turn towards Josh, since I'm mostly talking for him, "cooks and cuddles and makes love."
Cory finishes eating and leaves the table, and Josh sits down in his place. From Cory's point of view there is a conflict of interest between himself and me- I crowd him out. I should have talked to him just a little more when he came over and tried to hang out. Later I will rewind the scene even further back and think of what I could have done at that point. But now at the table Josh sits down and after dinner I help with the dishes. Before all of this, I should have offered to help him cook. He wouldn't accept it because it's his special meal, but the point is I offer.
I think of this revision to the scene. I am under the tent. "Do you want help?" I ask, walking over to the kitchen. "No," he says, "do your thing." "Okay," I say. I arrange the blanket over my head and work on my story until he brings me the plate and I rehearse the part of the scene that starts there again. I replay it all together in my head, thinking of all the things I could have done differently.
Posted by Lily at 10:21 PM
Thu | June 01, 2006
Apricot Jam
He got out of bed. "You want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" he asked.
"No," I said, but went over to hang out with him in the kitchen.
"I hope you don't mind if I have one." He pulled out a tub of peanut butter on the counter that must have been a half gallon.
"Wow," I said.
"We eat a lot of peanut butter in this house," he said, unscrewing the lid.
Dwarfed by the giant tub of peanut butter, he looked like a child. "And this is the best jam," he said, as he took out a not as large, but still sizable, jar of apricot jam.
"I wipe off the knife before putting it in the jam," he said, narrating his own action. It seemed like an odd thing to say.
He was telling me about himself-- that he doesn't get peanut butter in the jam jar. At the mall earlier that day he said that he used to work at Baby Gap and play with the kids all day. "I love kids," he said, "because I'm like a big kid myself." I didn't say anything in either case, about kids or peanut butter. It didn't occur to me to state my own views.
On a Friday night I miss him and I make a peanut butter and apricot jam sandwich. I wonder if I should have said that I use a different knife for the jam, because wiping it off with a crumpled napkin isn't exactly sanitary. And that I use spoons for jam, and that I like kids too.
Posted by Lily at 05:24 PM
Mon | March 13, 2006
dinner time
It's seven o'clock in my house and that's dinner time. When I was a kid, dinner was called supper-- by my classmates. I called it supper at school and dinner at home. It was one of many discrepancies that made me doubt my understanding of the most basic things... and with good reason because dinner at my house didn't mean the same thing as it did for others. For them it was special "family time" and they said grace and were scolded if they said "rub a dub dub thanks for the grub." Sometimes they went out to dinner at restaurants and sometimes they "had people over" for dinner. Or supper rather.
My dad tells few stories. But he does tell the story of how when he was a kid he used to stake out the kitchen so he could get to the table as soon the food hit the plate. Once he ate all the fish that was supposed to be for the whole family.
"I like fish," is the moral of that story.
Actually all my parents' dinner stories are about not having enough food. My dad says his mom would put out a plate of peanuts and the kids would grab them like hungry hungry hippos. And they'd put the peanuts in their pockets and eat them one at a time. My mom claims she hardly ate anything for years because she didn't get at it fast enough and no one noticed.
Dinner tonight is takeout, leftover from Saturday. It's greasy. I stand by the counter, what we call the island. I am sure I sit down for a few minutes at the table but I don't even remember. There are four seats at the table but one of them always has papers and mail in front of it so no one sits there. There are four people in our house right now-- Mom, Dad, me and Henry-- but because of the table situation we never sit all four at a time at the table. An informal rotation system is in place. I have finished my dinner and gotten up by the time Henry comes downstairs. I stand around just to hang out and watch him microwave a frozen pizza.
When it's ready he tosses the paper plate with his pizza on the table. A couple of sausage toppings bounce off and land on the floor. He doesn't notice.
"Hey!" I say. "Henry!"
"What?"
"I saw two of your toppings bounce off your pizza onto the floor!"
"Where?" He gets a bounty and looks for it like he's about to catch a bug. Calmly, as always. Henry is very chill. Sometimes I jump out from around corners and scare him-- just to make sure his reflexes are still okay.
He only finds one sausage piece. "The other day Dad did the same thing," I say. "He went over and took the toothpick shaker, and did this--"
I scuttle to the island and shake the toothpick shaker over my upturned left hand but don't look at what I'm doing. I look at the ceiling like I'm gaping at Superman.
"And two toothpicks fall onto the floor! And I wait a minute and he doesn't notice! And I'm like, 'Dad! You dropped two toothpicks!' And he says 'No, I didn't.' And I go to point it out to him on the floor, but he steps on them with his slipper. And he won't move his foot! When I got him to move his foot he said, 'No, that's not mine.'"
I walk back to the table and stand at the corner between Mom and Henry. "You're just like Dad! You've got to watch what you're doing!" I say.
"Na summa how shao," says Mom, because I am laughing and gasping for breath.
"Remember when Mom left for Taiwan, and the place was infested with ants in a week?"
"It's because he cut the orange on the table and left the juice there," Henry says.
"Dad is so inconsistent! He leaves the juice all over the table but if you sit on the couch and put your feet up, he gets all upset! He won't stop talking about it until you put your feet on the floor!"
My brother finishes his pizza and goes to the pantry to look for something else. It's the habit at my house to go to the pantry several times an hour and stare at what's inside. I go over and punch him in the arm.
I'm wearing a navy Bruce Lee t-shirt. "Hey," I say, pointing to the kernel-shaped drawing of Bruce's head screened onto my chest-- "do you know who Bruce Lee is?"
"Yeah."
"A karate champion."
"He wasn't a karate champion, he was an actor," he says.
"Whatever. He was awesome. He was like murdered or something."
"No he was like 90% muscle. He tried to make the perfect body for kung fu."
"Yeah he was awesome," I say. I think of that movie where he takes off his shirt and he looks like a plastic action figure.
"No that's why he died," he says.
"He died of too much muscle?" My brain has shut down and is now running on empty.
"He experimented with his body too much."
"No, muscle is good. He was murdered!"
Henry doesn't say anything. He only talks for a few seconds at a time.
"Yeah too much of anything is bad," I say. "Like those Koreans who died of too much video games!"
"Ai-right deel no deel!" I hear Dad say from the family room.
I am miserable but every once in awhile I forget.
Posted by Lily at 08:13 PM
Sun | March 12, 2006
the place on the floor
There is a place on the floor in my room where I played one day with my sister and our my little ponies and barbies. We were making up what was happening and giving them dialogue. It wasn't the first time we played there, nor was it the first time children mixed toy genres and made an impossible story with ponies and barbies. But we got to a plot point where it wasn't clear to my sister what would happen next. My sister, being older, usually led the play, and told me what we would do. "Having a birthday party" was a common subject. That day-- I don't remember the situation exactly-- she got to a point when we were playing and she didn't know what would happen next. And I told her. I talked for a few seconds... which was unusual for me. "And then?" she asked. And I came up with something more. This second addition, I remember, referenced and built on what had happened in a My Little Pony cartoon we had seen that morning.
Our mom called and it was time to stop playing. We went and did something else, but it was as if something had moved in my mind, shifted and settled like a snake sheds its skin. Or had cracked and fallen off like the dark layer around a peanut.
My sister had been just following me. I had gotten someone to accept my rationalization and explanation of things-- something I didn't know I could do. Yet when I did, it seemed like I always could have done it.
Now my desk-- a different one-- is near that spot near the closet. When I sit at my desk my feet are right next to it. A wire basket covered with blue linen, a container for my bags, occupies the place. Every once in awhile I walk to the other side of my desk, move the bin aside with my foot, and stare at that spot.
I wonder that I ever fit on that shiny bit of hardwood floor, and conjure up again, like an actor, the feeling of my mind breaking out of that space.
I tell myself that if I did it once, when I was seven, I can do it again.
Posted by Lily at 10:31 PM