Unfurled

I’m rising from the depths of virally-induced laryngeal wordlessness and finally re-joining the world of speakers.  Too bad I sound like a peri-pubescent boy.

I also have not slept in 24 hours, hence my newly minted phrase for laryngitis which I’m the first to admit is quite bad. It might also explain why I’m not deleting this post.  Maybe I will when I wake up.

Globe Trotter

So after at least one month’s consideration, I bought my third bike. My first one was an 8th birthday present from my parents. They never taught me, and I never asked– in fact, the bike just sort of, rusted away. My second bike was a second-hand Dahon folding bike that my friend David found for me. I did try to learn on this one, but the small wheels made it a little hard to navigate and I kept crashing into things. I gave it back to him.

I had not intended to buy a bike on this specific day, but I happened to be walking past a buzzing bike store and must have caught a little of the vibe.

So I got me one. Now I just need to learn to ride it.

I’ve always been a fan of foot massages in theory. Mention foot massage and I get the phantom sensation of  warm water swishing around my feet  and soft hands tenderly rubbing down my soles and toes, rotating my ankle in pleasant sweeping circles, you get the picture. So when my friend invited me to go to Chinatown for a foot massage, despite the fact that I hadn’t slept for 30 hours (I work nights), I didn’t have the heart to say no.

After what seemed to be an interminable walk from the East Village (anything seems interminable after 30 hours of no sleep, even eating tiramisu at a dessert place featuring 8 different kinds of tiramisu and sipping on cool Italian soda, which we did as well– as sort of a mental apertif, if you will), we finally found ourselves walking on streets with signs no longer in English and lots of headless roasted ducks hanging in the windows.

We identified our destination by a sign reading:

BACK MASSAGE

FOOT MASSAGE

Seems like what we were looking for.

We walked down from the street level into, well, a basement.  A nice one to be sure–  the room was about the size of a large NYC living room, a flat screen TV along one wall with probably a 60 gallon fish tank next to it. The air was cool but muggy, and smelled of mildew with a Glade air freshener accent. There were three recliners in front of the TV and fish tank where, I suppose, clients are supposed to sit, but at that particular moment, we saw two girls slumbering in the two chairs in front of the TV. On screen, an attractive Chinese couple were gazing into each other’s eyes.

We probably should’ve turned around. Instead, “Hello?”

One of the girls sprang up from her chair and nudged her friend awake. Her friend must have been deep in sleep because it took at least 5 aggressive nudges before she finally stirred. They removed themselves from the chairs and pointed us into them.

The seat was a little warm, and the room was humid and stuffy, but I’m no princess, I can handle it. I stretch into my chair, they bring some cool water, I recline back a little, they pop in another DVD (another soap opera, my friend thinks in Cantonese), they bring a wooden tub filled with hot water, I stick my feet in. Ahhh…

This is why I deferred sleep. I felt the muscles in my legs, back and neck loosen. My eyelids felt heavy. I could feel my limbs get heavy. (I did get a little tense after I noticed these tiny quarter-sized turtles in this enormous tank filled to the top with water– I saw they’re little legs treading the water to stay afloat at the top.)  I closed my eyes.

One of the girls gently took my foot out of the water and gave my legs a rub down. (sigh) Then she started kneading my feet, and kneading. Ouch. Ow.  I felt the girl’s knuckles scrape down again the long bones of my feet and then just dig like a sharp screw into my heel. My foot reflexively curled in and my knee bent to take my foot out of harm’s way.

As I said, I’m no princess. I can handle it. I bravely force my knee to unbend and my foot to uncurl. My body is tense.

Her hands move to my toes. I feel her knuckle (or her nail, it’s hard to tell which– it’s just sharp, whatever it is) dig into the base of my big toe and dig its way up and then a special dig at the tip. To each toe, she does this. I think I nearly faint when she does the 4th toe (when do you ever feel your 4th toe?).  I assume my groans, profuse sweating and the fact that I had slipped in the chair to a near full recline would suggest to her that I’m uncomfortable. I hope that she lets up, but no– she moves to the other foot.  In my broken haze, I’m unable to say anything to stop her. Plus, I think part of me still says I’m no princess, I can handle it. (This is the same part that me that decided that working nights is actually a good idea.)

At some point, we make eye contact (I have heretofore kept my eyes squeezed shut because I can’t do anything but deal with what’s happening to my feet), “Hut?”

“Yes! yes! VERY painful!”

She nods and continues to knead. Hard. As if I’d said nothing. I nearly faint several more times and decide to kiss my dreams of becoming a spy good-bye since I’d be guilty of treason if anyone came near my feet.

My friend meanwhile is chuckling at the dog playing tricks on TV and trying to explain to his masseuse in the universal language of slo-English  that he knows that “gau” can mean “dog” or “8″ depending on its intonation.

The finale came when she put both my feet on the foot-stand, grabbed hold of paired toes while standing at my feet and threw my legs to form a sine wave out of these now broken limbs, 5 times. You know, for each pair of toes.

I walked out of there, yes. But I’m never letting anyone touch my feet again.

You know it’s been a long time you’ve written when you can’t quite remember what you called your blog.

Nearly every Tuesday at 11am since November 2008 I’ve been going to see Sue. Sue is someone I pay to hear  all about all the excruciating details of my childhood.  How about the petty fights I had with my sister when I was 10, 11,..12, 13, you get the picture, or the not-so-quiet Sunday morning  when I was 5 and my father  decided he could teach me how to tell time before church  (I missed church).  You know, the stuff that no one else could actually stand to listen to without the eyes glazing over.  It’s surprising how the little, seemingly inconsequential details from eons past manage to spill out with knife-like clarity. We human beings are rather funny creatures. I can never remember where I left my house keys, but I can remember exactly how murderous I felt, in the only the way a 7 year old can– by running to mommy and daddy– when my sister made all the other kids sing, “I dream of Genie with the ten ton weenie.”

I tried Sue as a last resort after I realized that changing one’s geography is not as therapeutic as one might expect. Perhaps it’s a good solution if your town was torn asunder by a passing tornado, not so good if you’re trying to escape yourself. In any case, my overall sense is that talking about my problems has been a good experience, as one who had some difficulty facing foibles in plain light for fear that they might actually turn out to be true.  The only major drawback to therapy– talking about yourself– is, in fact, that you end up constantly thinking about yourself. Everything–including why I don’t know how to ride a bicycle– becomes a subject of exhaustive (and exhausting) analysis. Some of this internal chatter bears fruit, but frankly most of it is really, well… boring.

Sometimes I wonder if I traded one problem for another.

Listening to: Madeline Peyroux, Weary Blues; Sarah Vaughan, Summertime

I sit in  a wonderful coffee shop on 28 Jane Street. It feels like I’m sitting in a friend’s loft apartment replete with exposed ceilings and brick walls. My friend likes to bake and fancies herself a coffee barista. Instead of a TV, a snack bar, instead of a bed, a great big red velveteen sofa. This is where I sit. In front of me rests a pumpkin latte with two shots of espresso and a grlled cheddar on multigrain on a chunky ceramic plate with pink and seagreen borders, something that might have made an appearance on Leave it to Beaver if it were in color.

It’s not much of a blog that’s updated once a year.  Happily, I believe I am now its only reader and therefore, have only myself to disappoint. On the other hand, I am in an excellent position to know my daily goings-on making me (the reader) less reliant on such sparse input of data.

However, it is true, as it is for all people who blog, I do wish to extend my list of readers to > 1, so again, for the 5th time, make a commitment to writing more regularly.  (At some point, I anticipate that the shame will force me to commit (My only concern is that I have a very high tolerance for shame)). Not that this will necessarily ensure more readers, but at least I’ll feel better thant I have not left even my imaginary ones down.

As I posted 5 months ago, I am in New York City and have been now for nearly 9 months. I will admit, the transition was not as ground-breaking as I first assumed it would be. I assume this is because I brought me along. I am me– in Boston, or in New York. And probably in Siberia too, except there  I might be cold.

So I started therapy. To help me see what it was that I’d brought along, besides my sheepskin rug and All-Clad pans.  I’d always prided myself on being unusually free of childhood woes and tribulations, convinced that I am who I am by virtue of my genetics with perhaps a small contribution from my environment.  I am beginning to learn that all of us as children received– besides the gumball machines, Cabbage Patch Kids and Laura Ashley dresses (I was a kid in the 70s & 80s!)–  a-little-something-extra-special from our home that might make us feel a little, shall we say, less than special.  I have my thing.  You have yours.

The problem is: once you’ve opened this grab-bag, you have only the option of getting over it. As quickly as possible.

This is stating the obvious, but i haven’t written in a very long time. Just 3 days short of its 10 month mesaversary. I’d thought about writing when I bought an apartment in Manhattan in January. I kept reminding myself to write when I was going through gut reno anxiety. It was suggested that I post when I found a job in NY. I needed the therapeutic release when I told the folks in Boston I’d be leaving. When I finally moved to NYC on July 1, I thought– finally! But by then I was in this transitional, indeterminate mode that I couldn’t stomach writing about anything. Then I started my new work– I had oodles of nocturnalist fodder, but frankly preferred to spend my waking hours not reliving my experience with sociopathic skin poppers.  Until today. Today I spoke with a friend who told me he’d come across my blog again. God, what a wonderful thing the ego is.

It’s not only what helps us humans stay on that path of constant achievement, but keeps us exercising regularly and preventing too long lapses between blog posts. Thanks BL.

I took a writing class a few years ago. One of our assigned exercises was to write spontaneously for five minutes in hopes that something about the physical act of writing might reconnect neuronal connections and unblock pent-up writers. This is essentially what I’ve been doing for the last five days. Lots of gibberish. I use this as a metric for my state of mind. Later I hope to be able to trace my psychic undulations over time. Periods of silence = shitty situation; shit posts about me = slow, painful recovery; banal posts about my friends and world-view = cured!  Since I hate feeling like shit, I’ll take it as a good sign that I’m sustaining this logorrhea.   Sort of the mental equivalent of having a deeply seated tooth extracted by a novice dentist.

I did read a NYT article today. In fact, I’ve read several which is way more than I’ve done in the last few months.  On an aside re: depression: I’ve noticed that as my mood worsens, I’m less interested in the world outside of me (or myself, I suppose).  But as I lose contact with the world,  my mood worsens even more. And the downward spiral begins.

I’ve never considered myself a depressed person. In fact, the only time I recall being depressed was in the first week of my freshman year in college. I remember having no appetite and never getting out of bed. This lasted only that week, but it wasn’t until I got to the depression chapter in my Psych 101 class in sophomore year that I realized that I was depressed. Up until then, I’d always thought it was because my bed was so comfortable.

Mood meter:

Blog posts today: 1

News articles read: 5

Real news articles I read: 1

I went for my usual Winnsday wharfing run- I’d describe it, but I have no idea what the names of the streets are. Maybe Atlantic Ave, turn right on some street, then down the waterfront where WG and I run up and down all the wharfs. Yippee!

Sometimes it feels like there’s a rubber wall in front of you. You push and push and all it does is bend around you. You think you’re moving forward, but all that you’re doing is running in place.

I went to the fish market on Saturday. I thought I might learn about the different fish from the fishmongers. They were not as interested in teaching me. I asked one unfriendly woman to name a few of the fish for me– sea bass trout snapper– what are these others?– what,  you want me to name all the fish here?– well, actually, yes.

How to select fresh fish assuming you find a reputable and more helpful fishmonger:

1. Smell the fish. The fish should have no smell or the smell of the sea. It should definitely NOT have a fishy odor.

2. Look for clear eyes. If there are any.