Today I was Interviewed

What made the event different was that for once it was in English.  Praise be.

However, it turned out the goal of the interview was to reveal “Common Misperceptions in the Public about Astronomy.”

Nice.  ”And was I the first person you thought of when asked to find misperceiving sorts,” I asked.

I was assured I was the second person.  So I gave the interview.

It turns out, big surprise, that I am more ignorant today then I was in my youth.  Proving, for once and for all, that I have left the first blush of youth.  I am in the second blush, you see.

I was asked three questions.

1.  To describe what the north star is.  Well, in my defense, the most important thing about it is that it helps us know where north is, right?  I mean, given one can find it.  I also threw out that it was a constellation, primarily because how can one star show north.  It cannot, I venture.  My dear interviewer tried to help me.  ”Is there anything special about it?”  I looked at him. “Well, um, it’s visible with the naked eye. That would have helped a million years ago. And for navigating the seas.”  I see him scribbling and begin to wonder if he’s going to write that this particular member of the public thinks that maritime dinosaurs navigated by the stars. “Thousands of years,” I butt in.

Then I had to say how confident I was in my answer, on a scale of 1 to 10.  I went with a solid 6.5.

2.  To describe what the zodiac is and how many constellations are in it.  Aha!  Not for naught did I get my degree and go in debt!  I used my hard-bought reading skillz and ventured based on the question that the zodiac is comprised of constellations.

I see my gentle interviewer waiting for more, first with his fingers hovering over the laptop, and then with a slow frown and raised eyes. “Visible constellations. With the naked eye.” He sincerely tried not to smile.

I announced I felt quite secure at 0.1 on the 1 to 10 scale of certainty.  He announced the scale started at 1.  ”One point oh, then. Recurring.”

3.  To describe what the seasons are.  Humiliating.  I squinted.  I crushed my eyes shut.  I raised one hand in front of me, and the other off on the side and began spinning it around.  It’s impossible to spin your hand, what with the arm being attached to it and all.

It was not, shall we say, my most eloquent moment.

After several disjointed nouns and no verbs, I went with: “The sun and how we, um, go around it. On an angle. And the moon? Tides? The way we move. Where is the sun?”

I didn’t wait. 3.5, I said.

The thing that makes this debacle extra sad, dear readers, is that my laptop for the past two weeks has been perched on the following book:  Universe.  Only the highest rated book on astronomy for beginners.

Maybe it’s time I read it.  :)

EGAD!

New York City at Night -- Brooklyn

Henry, my Butler

It started with Henry, or rather, with his absence.

I would call for him.  Not rudely, mind you.  Just a little call, from the couch. 

But–nothing.  Nary a peep in return.  No Henry dashing to service.  No calm and collected footsteps, no tray of culinary delights.  Nothing.

Now, I know for a fact–my source being one P.J. Wodehouse–that butlers are meant to shimmer into service.  Henry was meant to simply pop up, the thing already done the instant that the desire occurred to me.

But Henry did not.  I will grant that I had never formally hired Henry.  I will even grant you that I have never met a Henry (who wasn’t a cat).  But I felt, on principle, Henry should just come. Good help would.

So I began thinking: Maybe if actually HIRED Henry, he’d come.  I began imagining his face drop as he surveyed his new domicile, and my face dropping as he took over my couch.  (Musing about this while starving on the couch being preferable to cooking dinner myself.)

And this brought to mind the other pressing question.  What would Henry buttle?

So I texted someone from my couch to find the answer.  And to my perturbation, it turned out that butlers head one’s household staff.  Now, as I am the only member of my household staff, this means that if I hired Henry, he would be the boss of me.

That would not do.  That position is already taken: I am the boss of me. And it’s a lifetime position–I checked before signing.  So this was a bitter finding indeed.

Gone were my dreams of Henry.  I reconciled myself to this fact, on the couch. 

But then the tide turned.  No, I was not called by a butler service letting me know they were having a promotion and I could have a free butler for a year with an option for renewal.  Something a little more subtle, like me.

You see, it had occurred to me–What was Henry’s job?  It was to satisfy my every whim, right?  To be at my beck and call.  To make my home a palace.

And what does A/C do?  You get my drift, I think.  Right before the heat wave, I made the call.

Henry I, who was installed in my bedroom window, is simply marvelous.  While neither he nor Henry II, sitting enthroned in my living/dining room, are particularly SILENT Henries, I find I am willing to have a purring rather than a shimmering Henry.  Just so long as when I snap my fingers they hop to service…

Every woman should have a Henry.  And probably every man, too.  Bertie Wooster would agree.

Today I was mildly irritated by a fly

Now, I have no problem in general with flies.  How could one.

But this fly is being ridiculous.  For he is flying in an erratic circle in the middle of my living room, with no evident purpose whatsoever.

Don’t get me wrong.  I could understand a fly zipping about in hopes of returning to nature, if one can use that word for Manhattan.  I can even understand a fly narrowing in on the scent of something delicious or better yet, pungent.  This would be reasonable. 

But this little bugger, if I may use the word, isn’t going anywhere at all.

I’m taking notes for the book, and moving forward on my characters and the narrative threads, and here’s this doo-dah exhibiting the most untoward behavior.

“Meaning,” I say to the fly. “Without meaning, you’re just being silly.”

He ignores me, and is continuing to fly nowhere repeatedly as we speak.  If he would at least land, he should make me less dizzy.

“If you wipe your feet, you may land,” I tell him.

He makes another circle. 

I return to my characters.  None of whom behaves as he does, or I’d kick them out of the story with no further ado.

And on that note, I have just deleted a character for accomplishing nothing, or as I shall in future refer to it, being a silly fly. 

Ah.  The fly has just flown away.

I feel mildly inhospitable. 

Rustaveli Street, Tbilisi, Georgia

War and Peace, a tale of class warfare

I had a Russian teacher once who didn’t much like me.  In her defense, I did not attend class with particular regularity.  In my defense, this was because she had committed two terrible indiscretions, the second being worse than the first:  she had a class favorite, and it wasn’t me.

Instead of witnessing such wrong-headedness, I took to lolling about in the park with my friends.  But come the final exam, I made sure to attend.  I am nothing if not a model of propriety.

It was an oral exam, and it was worth the bulk of our grade. 

“Ruth,” she said, “as you may have heard, we read War and Peace in class.”  I had not heard this.  To have heard this would have required me to associate with my classmates.

Instead of answering, I genteelly scraped my jaw off the floor and rearranged my features into a stretched, sub-par variation of “oh, did you not notice me in class?”

All this time she was looking at me from the top of her eyes, and I was steadily smiling back.  Maybe overly widely.  Never show fear, shock or complete consternation to the enemy.

“Ruth,” she said, “please tell me about Prince Andrei and Natasha.”

I nodded.  Like many a Russophile, after all, I HAD read the damn book, or at least the Peace part of it.  But in English, my friends.  Not in Russian.  Not after but three months of the language!  I could not FATHOM how the class had done it.  But fake it, I would. 

And so, with a polite cough, I passionately brought Tolstoy down a notch, to my simpleton’s grasp of Russian.

Once upon a time, there was a Frenchman called Napoleon.  Napoleon did not like Russia.  No!  Napoleon told himself, Russia must—suffer!  Russia—bad!  (This is Napoleon, not I.  I like Russia.  But Napoleon—No!)

Napoleon with many Frenchmen came to Russia, and then Napoleon—with pistols!  Bad!  Very bad!  Many pistols!  More than before!  The Russian people—sad!  War!  Many men come in to war!

Prince Andrei also.  But Prince Andrei loves Natasha!  Natasha additionally loves Prince Andrei’s!  They have met each other to dance in a nice place.  She is beautiful.  He is—there!  They dance!  And they love each other.

Then Prince Andrei asks Natasha to—live with him forever!  Natasha agrees!  Prince Andrei is in the war!  It is bad!  Natasha is at home.  France is bad!  Napoleon!  War!  Pistols!

Suddenly, Prince Andrei is—A gun!  No!  Pain!  In his body!  Prince Andrei—it is very sad!  Prince Andrei’s soul!—leaves him!  Forever!

It is very sad.  There, that is the anecdote of Prince Andrei and Natasha in War and Peace.  Thank you.

She looks at me.  I’m sweating and congratulating myself on my genius.  It is incidentally the first time I truly realize how flexible one becomes with a new language when one doesn’t have a full vocabulary.  And that one should always know the verb for dying.

“Ruth,” she says, in English now, “we only read one scene.  When they met, at the ball.  Not the whole book.” 

“Ah,” I say, growing hotter.

“What am I going to do with you?”

Ah, this is great.  I hadn’t realized I would get a vote here.  I am very good at advice.  I lean forward.  “If I were you, I would either fail me or give me an A+.”  I nod.  “I would lean toward the A+.”

She dismisses me.  I don’t get a chance to explain why I would give myself the A+.

My grade comes in two weeks later.  She’s had the audacity to give me a B+.  I fume.  I would have preferred a stronger statement, one way or another.  But I guess this is what she did, nick the pleasure from a high grade, showing ultimately the point is knowledge but also respect.

Years later we met again and I can say I was still not her class favorite.  And once again hers became the only Russian class I ever skipped.

my word for the day (if I can limit myself)

LACONIC

Read its etymology recently?  Originally it refered to people from Lakonia, an area around Sparta, whose inhabitants were famously terse.  Better than terse.

The story goes that when Philip of Macedon threatened them, “If I enter Lakonia, I will raze Sparta to the ground,” the Spartans retorted simply: “If.”

I need to work on my laconic delivery.  Excuse me while I go practice.

It wasn’t what I was expecting.

Not that I had great expectations.  Mostly, I just expected the same old.  Which I quite love.

But instead, as I turned the page of my delicious new book–Holderlin’s Hymns and Fragments–and absent-mindedly looked out the living room window, I saw something quite unusual.

Not, I will grant, unusual in and of itself.  After all, people do bathe.  They just don’t usually do so in front of me. 

It turns out that across the street, there’s several floors of the building which have 6-foot high windows in the shower.  In the shower, ladies and gents.  Not just in the bathroom, but in the shower.

At first I thought it was a woman getting dressed, and that she kept her armoire awfully close to the window, and ought be told.  Then I noticed the person manically scramble their hair and thought, hm, when I do that, I’m usually…washing it.   And oftentimes this happens rather far from my armoire.

Then the person, who was becoming, on closer scrutiny, a butt-nekkid man, began a love affair with his body that more closely resembled washing it than dressing it.  Huh. 

I turned the page.  Someone ought tell that man he needs a curtain, I thought.

A few minutes later I looked up again.  What on earth was that guy doing now?  Strange exercises, it appeared.  Then I realized.  He was squeegeeing.  Way too much. 

Seriously, I thought, rather than squeegee your own thin veil away, why not move your bath a few meters away from the window and invest in a curtain?

Marvelous.  Apparently I DO have a room with a view.  And I need curtains. 

Stonework in Sighnaghi, Republic of Georgia

Mapping History, a modern quest

I suppose my dad was doing it to educate us, and not simply to stave away boredom with bouts of torture.  Back then I thought it was more like the latter, or that he had some sort of tic, and when he saw a map he couldn’t help but to begin interrogating us on capitals. 

And he would never pick easy countries.  God forbid he’d say France so I could pipe up with Paris and he could gaze proudly at his progeny.  Oh no.  It was always places like Uganda, Laos or the Canary Islands.  And Iceland.  Rejkjavik was my brother’s one weak-point; and he was my eternal opponent in these games which showed off some innate talent of his that I lacked—maybe memory?  I don’t recall.

The result of these childhood games has been catastrophic.  I now play capital city pop quizzes with my own students; turns out it’s not torture but riotous fun.  Who knew. 

Yesterday I called up HR to ask a question about benefits.  The woman who picked up asked me to spell my name.  I did what I always do, and spelt it out using country names.  (If you had a D in your name, would you say dog?  No.)  Obviously I use Dominican Republic, which is much more worthy indeed. 

Hey, at least I don’t wait for others to amuse me.

Anyway, turns out this woman was a Geography major in college.  Hm.  I forced myself to ask about my benefits and not take up the diverting news.  Ooh, I succeeded mightily well, I thought as I hung up, my question answered. 

I commended myself on my focus, and on my grasp of priorities and professionalism.  I continued to objectively commend myself some several minutes longer–December, after all, is a month for decadence.  And it was pleasantly distracting.  It was possible to completely forget the allure of a Geography major so close at hand.

Indeed, I had quite forgotten it, and it meant nothing at all to me.

Do you believe me yet? 

Flash forward two seconds after hanging up:  I’m at the computer again.

But the woman is a walking map, I thought to myself, tapping away on the keyboard.  How could I possibly let the opportunity pass to ask her questions of great import and irrelevance?  I mean, would that be the responsible thing to do?  Obviously not.  Not on a global level, at any rate. 

My head cleared.  I knew what I had to do. 

Yes, gentle Reader:  I called her back. 

“Uh, could you tell me the history of cartography, and also its modern execution?”

First she used words I’d never heard before–I scribbled anxiously, unable to figure out spelling or language of origin–and then she cracked my little dreams thoroughly—“you mean all cartography is done on computers these days and no-one romantically pencils maps?  Not even hot antique-looking ones in sepia?”

“No,” she answered, unmoved by the death of romanticism.

At my strangled sigh, she explained doing it by hand was impractical.  Then she offered to lend me a book on cartography, which, she warned me, “might be a little over your head.”  I nodded over the phone; technology is not my strong suite.

Ah well.  That was yesterday.  Today I have the book in my grubby paws, and am gleeful at its (temporary) acquisition.  I love these trinkets, these treasures that everyone has, if you just ask the right questions.

An hour after we hung up, a student came in to take care of a quick matter.  As he gave me the necessary paperwork I asked him, “What do you know about cartography?”

“What do you need to know?” he asked.

“Everything.”  Catsmile.  “Spill.”

"There's a road," he'd said, pointing. There was no road. But that's another tale.

I’ve been remiss…

I don’t know how it happened, my not blogging this week.  I fell into a flurry of books these past few days.  Since Tuesday I’ve read a book each day.  I don’t remember a thing before Tuesday… 

It all started with the BRILLIANT T.S. Elliot.

1.  Murder in the Cathedral – T.S. Elliot
2.  The Name of this Book is Secret – Pseudonymous Bosch
3.  The Monster Loves Its Labyrinth – Charles Simic (poetry)
4.  The Waste Land and Other Poems – T.S. Elliot (poetry)
5.  Magyk – Angie Sage
6.  Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

And then some side-reading into Memory’s Library by Jennifer Summit (brilliant), Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles (brilliant), The Cistercians by Stephen Tobin, and Rilke’s collected poetry.

My mind, my eyes…are fried.

I promise to put aside these books for at least tonight, and to reemerge with bloggarificness. 

I do have one new fact to share: 

Ever wondered how many new books the Library of Congress adds to its shelves each year?  7,000.
Crikey. 

I hope you’re all well!!!

Ask, and ye shall receive…

“Excuse me, miss, I don’t want to disturb you,” he said.

His eyes were a wide blue, his cheeks covered with stubble.  A man in his mid thirties or forties.  Slovenly and of feeble carriage.  His voice neither deep nor high, but on the higher end; the kind you hear from whatever plane of mind you were in, drawing you into him and his world and his problems.

Because the line “I don’t want to disturb you” implies immediately that disturb you that person will.

Maybe there’s an irony here.  An irony I didn’t feel till now that I write these words.

His approach, his words, they pulled me from my head on that busy New York street.  On the curb, still moving, I turned my head at his words and took in his appearance, his tone, his words in a fleeting two seconds, and then, without pause, without a word, I kept walking.  I looked him straight in the eyes and then past him, like there was nothing to it.  Nothing to him.

And that disturbs me even now.

Life teaches you to act instinctively in a variety of circumstances.  One beggar, two, four, twenty, one hundred.  One fake limp, three, ten, a hundred.  One hoax, two, three, almost everyone.

And then the decision, reached without words and conscious thought, that almost no-one asking for money can be trusted, and that anyone asking for anything from a stranger is really asking for money.

And from there the dehumanization of one another. 

There on that blowsy Broadway corner, I took him in, computed his existence and without a word, without a blink—for reaction of any sort to a potential predator is a weakness—I discounted him as unworthy.  I fancied I could fathom his purpose from a second.  From one clause.  Unworthy of even the breath it would take to hear a second one.  Unworthy of engagement.  And I passed him without a break in stride.  (God, how dehumanizing!)

And then across the street from him I saw myself and was disturbed.

I resolved to write about him, but although I could think of nothing else on the way to work, once there I didn’t spend lunch writing.  Like that moment of actual need on the street, I found it easy to live in the rest of the day, and not in that question.

I guess there’s no truth but your own truth.  That’s the only one you can live honestly—that is, in harmony with your principles.

What I mean is—who knows about that man.  God forbid the man wanted help I could have provided and I shamed him by my treatment.  But you know what, it could have been.

Then again, maybe he’s just for some reason using others to fulfill his needs without due cause.  Due cause being he truly CAN’T get a job for a good reason.  Who knows, I don’t.  You don’t.

That morning on the street, I chose my interpretation.  I chose it.  Yes, he could have been anybody, and you know what, he was.  He was anybody, and I treated him like nobody, like I would any anonymous face.  But there is no anonymous face to the soul behind it.  An anonymous person doesn’t feel less, doesn’t feel less defaced, less degraded…

Yes, yes, I know, if he was just a cynic using public good will to satisfy a desire for drink or drugs or porn or god knows what, then my ignoring him just means someone else must give him the cash he wants.  I know.  He doesn’t see me as any more human than that, if that’s the case.  I know.

But I don’t, I don’t know.  I don’t know anything about him.  All I know is, a human being as I believe it is a special thing, and deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.  And knowing that, it’s cheaper for me to take the second or minute out of my day and spend it engaging him—that most valuable of currencies, time—and then spend the twenty five cents he requests. 

As Polonius said, “To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Better I should be true to myself in my ignorance and hope than that I should treat a man more poorly than he deserves. 

For oh, I did not stop to let him disturb me, but it was I, in the end, who disturbed myself the entire day long.

Who Needs a TV?

That is, when you don’t have curtains.

Winding down for the evening, I shut the lights at my new apartment.  That second, a hundred different screens blinked into life–windows across the way.

Truth is, not much is “on” when your screen is someone else’s life as seen through their windows.  People watch TV or have silent conversations.  They clean and walk around seemingly aimlessly.   Some even read, or are they doing homework?  Who knows.  And that’s about it.   Mostly my reflections focused inward. 

On my window frames, on my bare apartment, the expenses, the future.  And then on memories.  Memories about frames.

Like last winter in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.  When for light and heat I broke down and burned the wooden frames on my art.  How I learned to remove heavy duty staplers with a single hard-working tweaser.  (It’s all in the wrist.)  On deciding to make it festive by having friends over to skewer marshmallows (an overseas gift from a friend) with kebob sticks, toasting them over the picture frame fire.  Indoors.  The crackling sparks made by hidden staples that foraged so deep into the wooden frames that they’d ended up in the fire.  Our headlamps on.  Our laughter filling the cold, chasing out the void.

Frames.  They don’t have to be what we use to capture an image.  They don’t really even limit anything.  They just hold an image of an image, and even then, only for a moment. 

Then again, our lives are over in a blink, too.  In the meantime, it’s fun to think on reshaping frames, on tossing them into fires to make up our own ones.  At least then we’d never hold them sacrosanct.

Truth is, frames are part of our lives.  I suppose our brains need them.  And they do hold paintings up rather well.  And as Jesus and the Naked Guy are coming back soon, I’d best find me some new frames.  So when folks look into my apartment, they have something worth tuning into. 

Turkish Courtyard Seen through Doorway