Thrilled

I see them bloom for me and you

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On Thursday night, I went out for pre-birthday drinks with a whole host of friends—someone from nearly every walk of my life.  On the way home, I had one of those special, unexpected New York moments that I know I won’t ever forget. My very favorite subway performer got on the train. He’s a black man in leather and sunglasses and he plays the electric guitar through a miniature amp strapped to his hip.

He never rushes. I think that’s what I like about him. He played What a Wonderful World.

I said, “since I didn’t buy any drinks tonight [thanks for the beers, by the way], I’m giving him two dollars,” and had Caitlin hold on to the six-foot painter’s brush extension pole (another New York moment, and a story for another day) while I dug for cash in my bag.

“And I’m putting on my tiara for him.”

He strolled down the aisle and I dropped the money in his hat. He moved about two steps passed us, paused, and took two steps back, the amp swaying at his hip. He squinted at a spot about six inches above my eyes to read the hot pink letters on my tiara.

“‘Birthday Girl.’ You know, I just had a birthday.”

“Really? Happy birthday! Belatedly. I’m turning twenty-four.”

“I’m more than twice that,” he grinned. “I just had my double-fives. Have a very happy celebration.”

So I did.

The lines of communication are open, if blurry

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I don’t know when my home town school system started issuing e-mail accounts and web space to the staff, but by my junior year of high school, probably about half of my teachers had set up class websites.

They were all pre-formatted on a generic template. Clip art graphics at the top depended on the subject: the wobbly line drawn globe on the social studies pages; chalk and a slate for math classes; a test tube emitting glassy bubbles for Chemistry; maybe the globe again for Earth Science. The illustration options were limited.

On down, students might find course-related links, the attendance policy, the date of the first test of the year (or the previous year, in some cases). More than a few featured that stick figure construction worker and promises of “Coming Soon!” Zealous teachers added edifying quotations about hard work or knowledge, or the emblem of their favorite sports team, copied and pasted into pixelated distortion. And everybody threw their school district e-mail address up at the end of the scroll.

The point is that all of this was very experimental. Teachers dabbled in web presence the way most people tweak the e-mail font and signature settings on their first day at a new job. You mess with the text size and color. You pick out what will go at the end of composed messages and what will go at the end of replies and forwards. You either make it easy for others to figure out how to contact you by phone or you figure out how to make it nearly impossible. You might even scroll through those “stationary” styles, just to see what an e-mail would look like inside a circus tent. And then you’re like, “interesting idea, nice to have the option—not for me.”

Not surprisingly, a lot of public school teachers had a similar reaction to their new webmaster roles. “Interesting idea, nice to have the option—not for me.” Only they had already referred students to the website and it remained active, if orphaned.

One weekend, I sought out one of my AP teacher’s contact information via our class website and e-mailed her to ask a question about an assignment. I never heard a reply, so I improvised my way through and then approached her about it at our next class. Not only did she criticize the way I had opted to complete the project, she was also completely flustered, even offended, by the fact that I had sent her an e-mail about it.

It got around soon after that she had gone to someone in the administration and complained about having to use an e-mail address at all. It made her uncomfortable because it gave students too much access to her personal life or something. It was a violation of her privacy. I still wonder if anyone, before then or since, clarified the concept of e-mail to this otherwise fantastic teacher, or . . .

Who knows.

That incident was pretty much the best indicator I ever had that I was ready to graduate high school and go on to college where I could e-mail professors at all hours of the day and night.

But in the last six months, it’s become clear that what I was really ready for, all the way back in 2001, was my current job. What started with that errant e-mail to my teacher has ended with a steady stream of text messages between me and my boss.

I forgot my cell at my desk one evening during my first or second week. He heard it beeping or buzzing or something and sent me an e-mail so I wouldn’t worry over its whereabouts. I thought, “How nice of him!” and then, “Terrific. Now my employer knows that I can’t keep track of my personal items, and also, that my cell phone is pastel pink.”

He hasn’t held either against me, because my pink cell phone is filled with messages like: “Not feeling well. Can you go to launch?” “Did you see my sunglasses @ the booth?” “Put a cold compress on your forehead and feel better!” “Quick theater question. Check your email.” And “Halloween marshmallow peeps!!!”

Those days when it feels like New York City is all under one umbrella-ella-ella

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I started reading Overheard in New York long before I moved here and started overhearing things myself. When I first started working in New York, I didn’t actually spend much time immersed in public spaces, and after I finally became an official resident, I listened to my iPod or talked on the phone practically at all time while I waited for or rode the subway, shopped or wandered city streets and the park. When do people have a chance to overhear each other in this town?

Overhearing is an art. You can’t perk up your ears and start canvassing for material. The purest way to overhear is to not be listening. If your aural personal space is invaded by another person’s wit, humor, ignorance or stupidity, you can legitimately lay claim to their words and submit them to the site as the overhearer.

I sent in a handful of conversation clips and one-liners over the summer when I started walking a different set of streets in Chelsea and Greenwich Village almost every night after work and spent a lot of time exploring new Brooklyn neighborhoods on my own. The city kept me company and I didn’t use my iPod or my cell quite as much (yeah, the batteries kept dying.)

I had pretty much given up on seeing any of those quotes in “print” when I got an e-mail from Overheard at the beginning of last week: “The quote you submitted . . . Look for it on the site!” I was so excited to type the URL and scroll down, skimming for my name, wondering which one, which one?

Five-year-old: Ella, ella, ella, ella, ella, ella…
Suit dad: Alright, look! I don’t know what that means, but if it’s a bad word I want you to stop saying it!

–F train, 23rd St

I think it was one of the first quotes I submitted and not only was it posted on the site, the editors used it for the weekly headline contest. Nobody consulted me in regards to naming the winner, but I think the editors made the right choice.

If overhearing is an art form, then this piece is a true collaboration. I’d like to thank Five-year-old for getting that song stuck in everybody’s head (Rihanna probably deserves props, too) and her Suit Dad and for projecting his frustration at such a high volume and Lou P. for his witty headline, even if he completely missed the pop music reference.

Swing

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About a year ago I was living and studying in New Zealand, not blogging because internet was such a hassle and my laptop was fritzing, and this week specifically, I was in the middle of Spring Break Fall Holiday; a road trip around the South Island counter-clockwise, the same way water goes down the drain in lands down under.

One stop on this journey was Queenstown, popularly recognized as the adrenaline capital of the world. It is my personal opinion that whatever element puts the extreme into any X-treme sport was first divined in Queenstown soil. But I don’t usually hit the adrenaline too hard, so I tuned out when Anne read this in our Lonely Planet guide:

The new Shotover Canyon Swing is touted as the world’s highest rope swing (109m), where you jump from a cliff-mounted platform in a full body harness and take a wild swing across the canyon at 150km per hour.

Everybody else made reservations before we even arrived in Queenstown. “Four for white-water rafting, just three for the canyon swing. It costs $30 just to watch your friends, so I figured I’d spend the morning wandering Queenstown and save my energy for an afternoon of rafting.

We arrived in Queenstown the night before and proceeded with our choreographed hostel-arrival ritual: grocery shopping and package store followed by cooking, eating, and showering, and sleeping tight. Except I was the only one who slept tight that night. The others lay awake, or had strange dreams, or slept fitfully with the Canyon Swing on their minds.

By morning, my travel buddies were staving off panic attacks and anxious nausea. I was quite chipper and having second thoughts about just how extreme I could be. If I’d decided to go for it ahead of time, I probably wouldn’t have made it to the jump because I would have given myself a heart attack just worrying about it the night before. But on a sunny morning in the adrenaline capital of the world, I found myself at the counter asking to add another person to the Canyon Swing list.

And an hour or two later, I was barefoot, strapped into that full-body harness, loathing the tears welling up in my eyes…and then willing myself to step off the platform.

You know how people always say, “What a rush?” What a rush. My pony-tail was swept across my face, my hiking pants billowed with cool air, I swayed between the jagged, steady walls of the canyon and fell in love with white goats grazing on the slope. Those 2 1/2 minutes were probably the most rapturous and satisfying of my whole two weeks on the South Island. The nearly 200-foot freefall felt like bravery, the 650-foot arc felt like grace, and the breeze between my toes felt like freedom.

I was furious at myself for being so scared to begin with. But in that moment, I knew I was going to make it through.