- Reconnected with my very first English professor
- Became the object of a stranger’s lust in Prospect Park
- Had “Welcome to New York” brunch with Marie
- Had “Farewell for a while, New York” lunch with Rachel
- Heard the Doobie Brothers live at Bethel Woods through my mom’s cell phone
Posts from June 2008
Sometimes I like to Facebook in my third or fourth language
I learned and remembered a few things about the foreign language I used to study through Facebook en Español. (The site runs in at least 15 different languages—the option is at the bottom of the page.)
You use the definitive article when referring to the days of the week. I would have used en instead of el, as if I were saying “in Wednesday.”
Even though el libro de cara knows that I’m una mujer, it can’t figure out for sure that that would make me una Graduada.
In Spanish, you don’t just have a political stance, you have a political posture.
The Facebook link to “View photos of me” is apparently not a command, as the verb is not conjugated in the imperative tense.
Fascinante, ¿no?
How aburrido was your Sunday?
I quit the violin when they took away my fingerboard tape
I used to take violin lessons. One of my teachers gave lessons at her house, in her living room, which was blandly pristine in that way that seldom-used spaces are. To protect the cream-colored carpet, she spread a trail of throw rugs down the center of the room.
She placed two round rugs in front of the big arched window, where sunlight streamed in on the music stand. I would stand on one rug and she would stand one the other, looking at the music over my shoulder and counting the measures to keep me from losing my place.
I always had to remind her to switch rugs with me so she would stand on my right side of me, my ‘good ear’ side, so I could hear her.
I think the lessons lasted half an hour, maybe forty minutes. When I was ready to stop, I would lower my violin and shake out my right wrist a little and roll my left shoulder forward and backward, never taking my eyes off the music, as if I were bracing myself to push through the fatigue. It was during my very first lesson that I discovered that trick—every time, my teacher would say, empathetically, as if she were exhausted herself, “think you’re about done for the day?”
My convulsive stretches began incrementally earlier and earlier each week. I told my mom I wanted to quit the private lessons before I started walking into the living room with a crick in my neck.
For a while, I went to Ridgefield Music after school once a week. The carpeting in those cramped practice rooms in the back was probably due for an asbestos test. After my lesson, I would stand in front of the sheet music display and memorize lyrics, one verse at a time. “From a Distance.” “The Rose.” Joan Osbourne’s “One of Us.”
I wanted to like the idea of God on a bus, just another slob among the rest of us.
Just like I wanted to like the violin.
Grocery list attempt
Nutella, skim milk,
Sweet potatoes, whole wheat bread,
Cucumbers, mustard
Prospect Park is my backyard
Seen in Prospect Park this weekend:
- a woman jogging with a lit cigarette and a bit of a stagger
- a bride wearing a yellow sundress and a white straw hat
- a bride wearing white boots with stilleto heels and buttons at least half-way up her calf
- a puppy chillin’ in a cooler
- a dog catch someone else’s frisbee in midair
- another dog wearing a flower on her ear
- two people watching a movie on a laptop
- a man wearing an All Blacks jersey
- two dragonflies mating
- two lightening bugs (not mating)
- lightening
The weather was treacherous on Saturday night. Sadly, these magazines drowned on 8th Avenue.
Don’t think I didn’t stop to look for survivors. That Dwell could have thrown herself over a Domino to protect it. But everything was pulp by the time I reached the scene.
