2 more days

Last night, in the words of pop duo The Carpenters, I said goodbye to love. I don't recommend it. As a consolation, I did have a delicious dinner at Butter and saw Steve Erickson read from his latest novel, Our Ecstatic Days. Time Out had the time listed wrong, so we missed the first few minutes of the reading, but it wasn't long before I was engrossed in Erickson's tale of a single mother and a mysterious lake that appears in the middle of Los Angeles.

Of all the things I felt I needed to take with me when I left, my bed was at the top of the list. I am about to embark on the project of taking it apart so I can get it out the door of my apartment. Otherwise, the vast majority of my belongings are packed and ready to be loaded into the truck I'll be picking up today. The time is nigh...

rats! (or things I won't miss about new york)

A couple of summers ago, I heard a scratching sound in the cabinets beneath my kitchen sink. At first, my cat was trying to reach under the cabinets and play with the intruder, but before long, she would take a wide birth as she walked from the livingroom to the bathroom. I had always had something of a phobia about rats, but the sound of the rodent pushed me over the edge. I could tell it was not a small pest at all and I was too afraid to look, so I just taped the cabinets shut. Sleep did not come easily.

The next day, when the rat appeared to have gone on a brief hiatus, my boyfriend came over and attempted to calm the situation by clearing out the cabinets for me after I discovered a shredded bag and a pretzel that had been carried from one end of the cabinets to the other. (Lesson #1: Never store food anywhere that could seem like a rat buffet.) He stuffed steel wool in the entry hole and we nicknamed the rat "Buddy." All seemed fine until that night when I was awakened by the sound of Buddy chewing through the steel wool like it was cotton candy and rummaging around in the cabinets again.

A panicked call to the landlord got the super over the next day and he installed a thick steel screen over the hole. I was satisfied that the rat could not get in, but I was not prepared for what would happen next. All night long, Buddy chewed with what sounded like teeth made of small chisels at the wood around the edge of the hole, trying to make it bigger than the screen that was blocking it. I was well on my way to losing my mind by the morning, so while this may not have been the most humane thing to do, it had to be done. I waited until Buddy seemed to have returned to his daytime haunt and emptied my pepper spray canister into the hole. I don't know whether this killed him or merely turned him off, but Buddy never returned.

I was reminded of this horror scene when I was packing yesterday and had the television on in the background. Fear Factor came on and one of the stunts involved the contestants carrying dead rats in their mouths from one end of a room to a bucket at the other end. It was too much for me to handle. It should be too much for anyone to handle. However, if you haven't had enough of the rat talk, you might enjoy this piece in the London Review of Books (via Maud Newton).

3 more days

My trips on-line have grown precarious. I sit in this one low IKEA chair that started to fall apart a few months ago. Now the busted peg will never stay in place and if not for the support of the wall behind it, I'd be on the floor. Yesterday, a hinge on my laptop decided to give up the ghost, so now I can't close it and have to carefully hold the screen or it might unfold completely. So I'm risking a lot in order to keep this blog up to date.

I made fairly grand advances in the packing department yesterday. I'm feeling slightly more relaxed in that arena, but I've started having nightmares about brake failure and joblessness. Last night, I had dinner with some friends at a very cute Italian restaurant near Union Square, Borgo Antico. I don't think I'm going to eat again for awhile once I leave New York; I'm beginning to qualify for the glutton's circle of hell.

half orange

The other day, someone said I was going to find my "half orange" in LA, apparently a Spanish idiom (media naranja) meaning "soulmate." For some reason, it made me think about this quote, which is not about soulmates at all.

"The future is that which — tomorrow, later, next century — will be. There's a future [le futur] which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable. But there is a future — l'avenir, to come — which refers to someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected. For me, that is the real future: that which is totally unpredictable, the Other who comes without my being able to anticipate their arrival. So if there is a real future beyond this other known future, it's l'avenir; in that it's the coming of the Other when I am completely unable to foresee their arrival." - Jacques Derrida

4 more days

I woke up this morning to the news that because of all the rain they got in California recently, the desert is wildly in bloom, even Death Valley. I take that as an extremely good omen for my upcoming drive.

Yesterday I cleared out some bookcases, so I could give them away. They've found a home up the street. From there, I proceeded to organize, pack, clean, organize, pack, clean. When I couldn't take it anymore, I quit and finally watched Manhattan for the first time. I thought it was an appropriate selection for this week. I know this may cause an angry mob of cineastes to assemble outside my door with torches, but I just really don't get the "genius" of Woody Allen. I was hoping Manhattan would enlighten me. While the cinematography was quite breathtaking, I was relatively unmoved otherwise. Plus, who can look on the relationship between 42-year-old Isaac and 17-year-old Tracy with anything but retrospective creepiness after Soon-Yi? I kept wondering if it was somehow acceptable in 1979 for men in their 40s to date teenagers, but I don't think it was.

5 more days

Five hours of packing yesterday. I was totally wiped out, mostly emotionally, so I read some of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and took a two-hour nap to prepare for my farewell party last night. A very nice friend organized the gathering at the yummy tapas restaurant, Pipa, which is part of ABC Carpet & Home. To get to the restroom, you actually had to walk through a closed-off portion of the store. Many friends turned up and they all coordinated to get me New York-themed gifts (see photo below), which worked out well because I had received LA-themed gifts at my work farewell party. A lot of people were meeting for the first time, and it was a testament to the spirit of everyone who came to see them getting along so well. Of all the things I'm leaving behind in New York, I know I'll miss my friends most of all. Fortunately, for only a couple of benjamins, I can get back here at a moment's notice.

before the poison/forever hasn't happened yet

NPR just had a piece on the new Marianne Faithfull album, Before the Poison. She collaborates with PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, which seems like something that should have happened long ago. I'm also looking forward to the new John Doe album, Forever Hasn't Happened Yet, which features contributions from Neko Case, Dave Alvin, Kristin Hersh, and Grant Lee Phillips. A product of all this leaving I'm doing is that memories seem accessible to me in an unusually vivid way. Writing this post, I remembered seeing Marianne Faithful at the Central Park SummerStage in 1999 and also seeing X in a half electric/half acoustic show at the LA House of Blues a couple years before, both well worth remembering.

those wacky germans

At this hotel in Berlin, each room has been designed to individually evoke a kind of artistic vision. Some of the rooms are just plain bizarre and apparently, the premium on comfortable beds in Germany is not very high. If this idea is intriguing and you live in New York, you can always check out Ye Olde Carlton Arms.

Via Daily Candy

6 more days

I am now officially unemployed for the first time in 20 years (except for a very brief time in the early '90s in between working for a corrupt Internet start-up and cocktailing at a club on Sunset Boulevard). It hasn't hit me yet. Yesterday was an incredibly stressful and emotional day. I hadn't anticipated how long it would take to clear out a computer I had used for four years and how sad it would be to say goodbye in bulk. When I finally got home, I popped a bottle of champagne someone gave me last weekend and shared it with a friend in the packing rubble of my apartment.

can't explain

In an earlier post, I mentioned calling an ambulance for an old man who was having a heart attack. I had been walking near Gramercy Park when I saw the man, probably in his 70s, trip on an uneven piece of sidewalk and fall down. I helped him up and he started complaining of chest pains. After he told me he had recently had a heart operation and the pain seemed to be getting worse, I finally convinced him to let me call an ambulance. By the time the EMTs arrived, he seemed more concerned with his broken watch and getting my phone number than the chest pains, but I was glad he was on the way to the hospital.

Well, I never heard from him, but I assumed all was well. Then this morning, outside my train station in Brooklyn(!), who do I see but the same man?! We had a joyous reunion at which he told me he was still not feeling great and I suggested he quit smoking. I've gone years and years in this city without running into any number of friends and acquaintances, and I find it quite odd that I saw this man again.

get your raindogs on

Could there be a more comprehensive Tom Waits site than this?

falling apart

This picture best captures what I feel like these days.

LA blogs

Thanks to S.H. for the LA blogs now listed under Los Angeles in the Links column to the right. I'm going to do some research and add some more soon.