Men, numbers, and the 1 who called me back. Not what you're expecting.

Part 1 

One night this summer in Midtown Manhattan I couldn't sleep. I was restless. So around 2AM I went out for a walk. It was drizzling and chilly. I put on a full length black flowy skirt and a black sweater turtle neck. I put my hair in a ponytail, put on some black flats, grabbed a red and black umbrella and hit the streets. I had no intentions, except to escape the apartment and my cooped up thoughts. I crossed the street whenever I had the light and turned a corner wherever it felt like I was following the flow of least resistance. 

I paused on the corner of 41st. I had been walking relatively empty streets, but knew as I approached 42nd St I would be making the choice to enter more crowded territory. My night of solitude might lose its quality of introspection and turn to disgust if I encountered people in the setting of 24/7 consumption of fast food and clothes and stuff and stuff. 

But I wasn't there yet, on the corner of 41st I was on the block of bus parking and the whale mural, and the belly dancing bar, but that was unobtrusive. The sidewalk had that film noir quality of the lamplight being reflected in the puddles. Behind me, but on the other side of the street walked an amber-dark coffee colored skinned man, bearded, wearing a white tank top and sagging jeans carrying only a cardboard box and blinking out the rain. He paused also on the corner. He turned to see me looking at him. He pointed and asked if 42nd St was in that direction. 

"Yes," I replied and smiled, "What are you looking for?"

He wiped his face, "Uh, the bus station."

"Which bus are you looking for? There are two port authority buildings. There's an old and a new building, but both have buses."

"The 42nd street one. I'm homeless and there's a place I heard about."

"Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. The entrance on 8th avenue. Why don't I walk with you to make sure you find it?"

I can't remember exactly what happened. But I believe I ushered him under my umbrella and we started walking toward 8th avenue. In some sequence I can't recall, we exchanged names, he asked me where my rosary was, what I was doing, did my my parents know where I was. He told me about how he was looking into getting off the streets. We stopped at one spot under the bridge between buildings, which he said would be fine. 

He asked where I went to church and if he could call me sometime. I asked where he went to church, he said the Times Square Church, and I told him I'd been there for Bible Study and was actually planning on going to the Friday fellowship tomorrow. I told him he should come and I would see him there. He didn't have paper, but he had a small psalm book in his box, and I had a pen. So inside the front cover I wrote my name and number and "Friday Fellowship," so he would remember why I was giving him my number. As I was about to say goodbye, he said he'd rather go to the other side of the building. He just wanted to put his box down to rest his arms. I sympathized that his box must be heavy. 

"May I carry it for you?" I asked.  

He grinned. 

"You wanna carry my box for me?"

I picked up his box and as we started walking he draped his arm around me. He told me I made him think of his daughter and about a book he wrote called "Destiny." More and more, I started to think he was a little out of his mind. But I couldn't stop smiling. I thought we must look like an unusual couple and I could feel the crowd staring as we turned the corner on 8th avenue and started walking towards 42nd st. 

We stopped again, now at a set of stairs with many other nomads. I put down his box, and made a little speech in preparation to depart. He asked me where I was going. I lied and said a friends house, afraid if I said I was walking around with no place to be he'd insist I stay with him. As friendly as he'd been and as delighted as I was to talk with him and make him smile, I was also growing equally nervous. He hadn't said or done anything salacious. But his eagerness was mounting, and the comment about his daughter had slightly shocked me. 

He asked if he could walk with me. I said politely that I'd rather walk alone, but thank you. I was afraid I might upset him, but he continued smiling and said "I'll be here all night", "you know where to find me." 

I crossed the street without lingering, not quite sure if he'd follow me. When I was certain enough that I'd gone far enough in one direction, I made my way back, a little uneasy expecting I might see him again. 

I had been touched when I hugged him, it was a kind of hug, that made me think he hadn't been hugged in a long time. I felt some sort of perhaps naive missionary joy thinking I'd given him a vision of God's love or something.

But the evening was tainted. It wasn't a perfect service of love. I hugged him, walked with him, and carried his box, but our communication was jumbled with his randomness. And I thought of his daughter, if she existed, and how much pain must be involved to have a father like him, as sweet as he seemed. 

He was just slightly out of his mind and living on the street, and I couldn't fix that. 

Before I returned to apartment 5D that night . . . I would encounter a couple more eager and lonely men.  

"selective ignorance"

I picked up this term from Timothy Ferriss' book "The 4-hour workweek."

Obviously he didn't invent the concept. His succinct pitch for "selective ignorance" as a sort-of personal philosophy has been captured by many. My encounters include Sherlock telling Watson he didn't need to know things like the fact the Earth revolves around the Sun, because his memory is like a hard drive and he doesn't see the point in keeping in filled with irrelevant information.

In and after H.S. I was very disturbed by how quickly I forgot course material. Even though I'd gotten great grades in AP Calc, in only a couple months when peers would ask for help on their homework although the problem sets looked familiar I could not conceive how to solve them. When I confessed this concern to a friend's mom, she told me not to worry. She said the brain remembers what it needs. Basically, use it or lose. So if you didn't have it anymore it didn't matter because it wasn't useful to you (immediately so anyways).

When I read A Teenagers Guide to Liberation- something like the philosophy of unschooling, and autonomous education, I was amazed by the possibilities. I didn't have to follow a standard curriculum. Typical public school classes didn't necessarily teach all necessary information, they didn't even necessarily teach how to think let alone how to teach myself.

But slowly I became overwhelmed. I was supposed to explore what interested me? But the library is so huge. And sometimes my interests are based on my experiences thus far. And past experiences seem pretty arbitrary. It seemed like I needed to go out and explore different life experiences. But there are so many of those too. Overwhelmed by choice and paralyzed. and depressed. and i creeped forward slowly, looking for routine, meaning, joy, and peace. Routine to save me from whims, (bad ideas), lethargy, and fatigue (lack of motivation). Meaning to motivate me, and distinguish between my choices, assign them value. Joy to not fall to pieces (although obviously physically that was unlikely to literally happen). Peace to save me, save me from myself, my hatred, my sadness, my confusion, my despair.

And then it college I was reminded of this dilemma of choice reading Annie Dillard's The Writer's Life.  "Careful what you read, because what you read is what you'll write. Careful what you learn, because what you learn is what you'll know."

Again, it seemed like my experiences, my knowledge, my worldview, my life, was up to arbitrary decisions made by me. That scares me, again, basically to the point of paralysis.

His writing has a fuck-the-odds-and-succeed-at-life kind of tone, and my grouchy side surrendered to his compelling arguments and humor. . . . draft in progress

Loved finding a woman in Manhattan who would say "we will contin-yuh the study for another couple weeks."

the science and cuteness of imagination

David Brooks on imagination: "as it's sometimes called, double-scope integration. In any case, Harold [the 4-yr old case study for mind development], in the space of five minutes could be a tiger, his mom, a storm, or a building. For about seven months he was persuaded that he was a sun creature born on the sun. His parents tried to get him to confess he was actually an Earth creature born in a hospital, but he would grow quite grave and refuse to concede the point. They actually began to wonder if they'd given birth to some delusional psychotic" - the social animal p61
LOL.

Please take time to tell me your story

Please take the time to tell me your story. Please when I ask you a question, realize I don't expect a summary answer. Tell me a story. Tell me what the question means or doesn't mean to you. Tell me how you interpret the question. Don't respond to the question how you see it through my eyes. Tell me what you see through your eyes and why. Tell me what you see, what you think you see, your skepticism, and your intuitions, and your skepticism about your intuition, and your intuition about your skepticism. When a word comes to mind, tell me what that word means to you. Your response can't be too long, and if you don't want to answer, just say so, or in some way feel free to let me know.


When I say something, call me out on what I say wrong. Call me out on my ambiguities. on my blindness on my self-orientation, let me know when you don't understand what I'm saying or think I'm not saying something relevant to you. Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings, (but do attack me gently, please.)

Words

There are people who seem wise because they have something to say about everything. 
and there are the people who seem wise because they say nothing and sit there nodding or grinning enigmatically. 

Falling in the middle of these two archetypes, I speak just enough to make noise, and not enough to generate conversation, comfort someone at the right time, or propel my own thoughts. 

Whether it's philosophy, small talk, or Q&A after a panel I'm sometimes feel at a loss for coherent, appropriate, and topic or person attuned dialogue. 

Today I made a beautiful mistake in class that reminded me of why I should be cautious about opening my mouth. In terms of my favorite metaphor, the swinging pendulum, that also tracks the elusive LOST island, I've swung from gabber-mouthed childhood and adolescent expressiveness when I barely processed the words in my mind let alone paid attention to them as they verbally slipped out or how they were received to my current lack of processing but heightened self-conscious young adulthood. Today I ventured to speak because sometimes I'm compelled out of habit to fill silence for the sake of it. Still waters are just too suspiciously peaceful or really my pseudo-profound comments make more of bang when my audience members' palettes are prepped and cleansed with a dramatic pause. 

Sign 1 that my class participation was not going well: struggling to recall an anonymous quote. How can I convey the utterly failed pretentiousness?  

Sign 2: no reference to my comment after I made it. Although most student mini-monologues are dropped into the well of discussion, only to be laboriously drawn out by the professor if at all.

Sign 3: falling prey to the temporary delusion that what I had to say was relevant and insightful.

I once read on a scrap of paper taped to a nun's desk something like "the hardest of languages to learn is the language of silence," which was too bad because this nun was the lifeline connecting me to sanity via human verbal interaction (goat verbal interaction was another thread). What I'm trying to say is this is a woman whose voice I depended on. In my opinion she could never talk too much. I could've listened to her for hours. Maybe I should have that quote tattooed onto my arm as a reminder, but not her.

A priest once gave a sermon of St. Francis' advice to "Preach the gospel. Sometimes use words." The quote implies the importance of actions. The priest however emphasized that the point is not to discredit words. Words have their purpose, just because they're not always used well, does not mean we (I mean I, I'm totally giving myself a pep talk in case you didn't notice) should not give up on them.

There is a time and a place for words. The more you use them, perhaps the more likely you'll hit the mark.

Desires. We Have Them: a college bucket list

I took notes on a friend's extensive and fearless college bucket list. Here's my first draft. I may or may not actually do all of them or even try, but I'm glad to have them typed.

1. get lunch with a professor 
or tea because I'm not sure how comfortable I am eating in front of a professor . . . or drinking either, but this is about stepping out of my comfort zone 

2. bake something that would go well with a glass of milk and share it 

3. plant a plot on the farm
possibly garlic with Janice

4. go on a ride with the cycling club
this may require some prior training

5. take a percussion instrument lesson
not piano. bongos or cajon 

He has 100 . . . That makes me want to get up to at least 10. 

6. write with confidence

7. hand in an essay that I'm in love with

8. start a project outside of class
something entrepreneurial? community-oriented? research?

9. read with confidence
slow when I want to. fast when I want to.

10. host a collage/card making party
that means magazines, glue, jazz, and hummus

11. more headstands
handstands too eventually! 

13. acrobatic yoga? aerial silks? yes and yes.

14. feel my pancreas 
the epitome of inner body awareness as far as I've heard

15. find my perfect haircut
or at least favorite. this may involve a different shampoo

16. expand my postcard-worthy photo collection

17. learn more about herbs and spices

18. volunteer every semester

19. throw a cotton candy and kale chips party 

to be continued