emlocke

Category: Lately

  • Brewing

    My cousin is in town this weekend and we have spent our time seeing 27 Dresses, discussing the power of positive mental attitude coaching from The Secret, and confessing the crowning indiscretions of our youth. Marie is always on my side—she commends my strength but validates my weaknesses. We high-five each other all around.

    She told me this whole gossipy narrative about me as filtered through my mom, to our grandmother, to her mom and back to us. She said that the moral of the story came down to, “it was all on Emily’s terms,” and Marie said, “Well I’m sure it was!” Like, tell her something she doesn’t know. High five for that.

    Last night, we had dinner at Rice Thai Kitchen on 7th avenue, which is celebrating its twelfth anniversary with a 50% off special. We each ordered a glass of Thai Iced Tea, which is a sweet drink with a comforting spice. It’s served a little like a tequila sunset, with a creamy layer that hovers atop the crushed ice and tea.

    It would be easy to replicate with chilled black tea brewed strong, maybe with two bags, a little cinnamon and sweetened condensed milk or half and half. Twinnings makes a loose Ceylon Orange Pekoe (it comes in a dashing little tin) and a bagged black Ceylon tea. CurrySimple, a mailorder Thai food supplier, makes a real Thai tea syrup concentrate and has a pictorial of the process online.

    Apparently, the beverage is served in a plastic bag with a straw on the street in Thailand. I’m trying to picture how that would fly on the streets and subways in New York, where we really depend on our cans and cups and bottles.

    Whenever I have something with condensed milk, I think about manjar or dulce de leche, which means “milk candy.” It’s a creamy, caramel sauce that’s popular in Latin America. I spread it on pancakes, toast, sweet crackers and sometimes just my fingers when I went to Chile. It comes in a jar there, but you can make it on the stove top.

    1 quart whole milk
    1 cup white sugar
    1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
    1/4 teaspoon baking soda

    Bring milk, sugar, and vanilla extract to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, and continue cooking, and continuously stirring until the milk has thickened and turned a caramel color, about 1 hour. Stir in baking soda. Continue cooking until the milk has reached a pudding consistency. Pour manjar into a bowl and cool completely in the refrigerator.

    I’ve heard that you can also whip this up with nothing but a can of sweetened condensed milk submerged in a pan of simmering water for three hours, but that sort of sounds like a science experiment and I’m not asking for any explosive disasters in my little kitchen.

  • No more Miss Nice EmLocke. (If that’s okay with you.)

    This morning on my way to work, I taped a letter to my super’s door. I couldn’t stop thinking about it on the train, in line at Dunkin’ Donuts, or in the elevator.

    I emailed my roommate as soon as I got to my office: I’m assuming you saw my envelope taped to Mo’s door when you left this morning. Or had she already taken it down and read it and she was standing outside her door with her foot stuck out to trip you? Sorry that you have to be associated with a curmudgeon like me.

    Caitlin and I live right above our super—I’m calling her Mo. She came up to the apartment late last Sunday morning, a few hours after I had heard music pounding up through her ceiling and rattling my floor. The music has become a contention between us in the last four or five months, but I absolutely dread confronting her about it. The thumping always stops when I go downstairs and ask her to turn it down, but I never feel better.

    It’s not like it’s so loud that I can hear the melody or the lyrics from my apartment, but that almost makes it worse. The disembodied, incessantly rhythmless bass beat sounds ominous, sometimes like rumbling explosives.

    When she knocked on my door that morning, I hadn’t been out of the apartment but I was definitely out of bed. And yet, I pulled this ‘sleepy’ act. I had my knuckles in one eye before I reached for the door knob with the other hand. I stood there rubbing at imaginary sleep sand and sort of squinting. My end of our conversation consisted of mewls and mumbles and I thought “what am I doing? This isn’t even an accurate portrayal of me when I’ve just woken up.”

    Me when I’ve just woken up looks a lot like me still asleep, except scowling. The words, if there are any, are loud and have been known to hurt feelings.

    But the super came up and I transformed into a darling kitten. I couldn’t even look Mo straight in the eye as she said, “I was just coming up to ask: when you stomp, does that mean ‘too loud’?”

    Oh, so I guess she did hear me stomping those couple of times when I’d had it up to here and intentionally tramped down the hall or danced an aggressive running man, just to expel my own frustration. But when someone basically asks you, “are you so passive aggressive that you’ve resorted to throwing teensy fits?” can you really look them in the eye if the answer is “pretty much”?

    Mo went into my room to listen and neither of us heard anything at that moment, so she said she wouldn’t turn the volume up past that setting. We must have listened during a track change or something because the test failed. All week I heard the thumping. I couldn’t read or watch TV or brush my teeth without listening to it, eventually listening for it.

    Mo actually suggested that I continue stomping on the floor whenever the sound bothered me, but I felt like that could turn really quickly into me becoming a cat person who shuffles around in a polyester housecoat and carries a broom at all times. Enough!

    Finally, I put my plea in writing. I composed the letter. Cited a timetable. Delivered it. I put my foot down. And right now I would give anything to become a kitten and curl up in a basket so I don’t ever have to confront this issue again.

    P.S. The January 11th episode of This American Life is called The Super.  The free download has expired but it’s so worth streaming it for free.  Act I is particularly fun to listen to and has a stunning revelation at the conclusion.  Act II is a real story’s story.  It starts around twenty-seven minutes in. 

  • No really, are you gonna eat your crostini?

    Last night my roommate and I met a friend at Gottino, a still newish wine bar that was recently lauded in New York magazine and therefore was packed—candelit faces were lined up along a brick wall with a ledge and gathered around bistro tables no larger than the stool seats at the bar.

    Hooks and fake spigots were fastened every here and there for hanging handbags and coats. I love pretty, practical things like that, but I held my gold sequin snap clutch in my lap so I could gaze at its impractical prettiness. We all kept our coats on, even after we got drinks and seats, because it was bitterly, hatefully cold out and we were reminded of that every time someone came or went through the window-paned door right behind us.

    Almost everyone was wearing a coat or cold weather accessory. Our corner of the bar was crowded with wicker and wire baskets of walnuts and bread and quince and pomegranates and the menu of glasses and small plates was written in chalk on the wall, so when I got my “craft beer”—a Hennepin, which I chose in keeping with my New Year’s Resolution to order something new every other time I’m out—I sort of felt like I was attending an elegant autumn bonfire spirit rally.

    The waiters were passing plates of crostini and cheese and garlic sausage and butternut squash bruschetta through the harvest on the bar to the head chef (wearing a jacket and scarf over a hooded sweater), who was standing on our side to serve the food. She brushed against me a little whenever she reached for a new dish. She kept apologizing and each time as I forgave her, I apprised whatever morsel she was sliding beneath my nose.

    At 1:00, the crowd had diminished. Caitlin, Amy and I had room to put our elbows up on the bar and brandish silver nutcrackers at the complimentary walnuts and chestnuts. Eaten plates began to return from the tiny tables. I found myself eyeing a torn-off bread crust beside a mason jar of pâté just yearning to be scraped clean; most of a dollop of whipped cream and two strawberries that had been pushed off the top of a pastry and left behind—leftovers. Leftovers are my favorite foods.

    The thing is that I have a taste for texture. I crave the taut chewiness of pizza crust and the brittle crisp of burned cheese with the pulpy, viscous tomato sauce in between more than I crave the flavors.

    I like hot food upon its return to room temperature. I like the edges of things, the crusts and crumbs that normal diners brush away. I like the way a bite of bruschetta dances across my tongue and the way whipped cream sings between my lips. And the last few “I couldn’t eat another” bites that other people forfeit at the end of a meal are just about the right portion size for me.

    It was pathetic and a little sad and pretty icky, the way my mouth was watering over someone else’s leftovers. When Amy asked me, “are you hungry? Why don’t you order a plate?” I said, “because I’m not really hungry. I don’t want my own plate. I want what’s on that one.”

    Caitlin’s used to my grazing. She just glared at me and pushed the plates out of my reach, away from my sly, grabby hands. “Finish your beer, Em. Crack me another walnut.”

  • On this the princess had to lie all night

    By 3:00 this morning, I’d given up on sleep. It was hot in my apartment and I couldn’t lie still or I’d start to melt into the mattress. I’d shift to a cool spot between the sheets. Listen to the heater (like baby birds in the morning). Swallow around the thirst on the back of my tongue. Shift to a cooler spot. Listen to the heater (an orchestra tuning up). Swallow.

    At 3:30, I decided to pass the time watching for the beginning of the snow storm. By 3:36, I’d given up on that, too.

    Sometimes inventory helps me doze off. I closed my eyes and pictured the objects on my nightstand: reading lamp, lime green hair elastic, tiny zip-lock bag with a spare button, Love in the Time of Cholera, pink bracelet that I can’t get on or off without help, J. Crew catalog. That was too easy. I snapped on the reading lamp and flipped open the catalog. Sometimes product descriptions lull me into dreams about ballet flats and beach dresses.

    Instead, I started a “resort wear for imaginary winter vacation to Belize” shopping list.

    Lists! Lists always placate my mind. I poked around for the notepad upon which I’d written a to-do list for the weekend and started ticking off tasks: write thank you notes, finish unpacking, gym, vacuum, Target, donate old clothes, put new sheets on the bed—whoops. Hadn’t gotten around to that.

    And I’d crossed it off the list.

    I mean, what would you have done? Tell me you would not have gotten up, pushed all the pillows on to the floor, stripped the bed, unpacked the 400-thread count sheets your parents gave you for Christmas and made up the bed with them, with hospital corners and double-layered pillowcases and a spritz of linen scent at 3:48 AM?

    Or maybe that’s just me.

    Oh man, I love these sheets. They are pre-washed, still starchy-shiny, but already they are so soft, and so smooth that they seem barely there.

    I have this picayune anxiety that I’ll become more and more spoiled by bed linens, hardening myself to consecutively higher thread counts until I liken four-figures to sandpaper and develop an immunity to softness. Luckily, I was able to put the fated curse of The Princess and The Pea out of my mind and manage about two hours and ten minutes of fairy tale slumber. I never wanted to get out of bed.

  • NYC: We know drama

    I spent most of last week in Washington DC on a trip for work, and while there was plenty of work to be done, I had enough time to enjoy what was my first extended stay in a domestic city without a permission slip and a chaperone or my immediate family. My mom with her guide books and morning coffee requirements, my dad with his alarm clock and morning paper requirements, my brother with his appetite and wireless internet requirements, they were all absent from my hotel room.

    On the trip down, I drank coffee and then Diet Coke in a seat all to myself, concerned with no one’s garbage or luggage but my own. I examined a map of the city because I like looking at maps, not because I had to navigate for someone else.

    I took myself to the zoo, took myself halfway to the Cathedral, took myself to a coffee shop with free wireless internet. I went to see the Edward Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery with a coworker and I went for beers with Lauren, but I went to bed every night with the TV on because it felt like an indulgence just for me.

    One night, on the way back from dinner with Lauren, I was bragging to my mom about my fancy high-speed train trip over the phone. Before we hung up, she asked how far I was from my room. “Keep an eye out,” she warned when I told her I was nearly to the hotel lobby, “It’s not New York.”

    Half an hour later, I was in my pj’s and in bed, watching Law and Order: SVU and I realized how much pleasure I take from watching the New York crime dramas in my New York apartment.

    It’s not DC.

  • Am I crazy or would this kind of be a cute outift?

    I love my new riding boots, but I sort of adore this enormous shopping bag. When am I ever going to land another J. Crew bag this size?

    But it serves absolutely no practical purpose, so I’m documenting it before I put it to better use.

    I’m going to go through my closet for clothes and shoes I don’t wear anymore and use the bag to carry them up to Grand Army Plaza later this month. The Council on the Environment of New York City and the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket will be collecting used clothing, footwear, and household linens on behalf of Goodwill. The program is called Second Chance Saturdays. Textiles can be dropped off at the Greenmarket from 8-4 every Saturday until the end of March.

  • Just a smidge behind the Times OR On Peter and Jerry

    It was early October when I saw Peter and Jerry at the Second Stage Theater, and it closes tomorrow. But since the closing itself warranted mention in The New York Times weekend preview e-newsletter Urban Eye, it must not be too late to talk about it.

    In 1958, Edward Albee wrote one act about two characters and called it The Zoo Story. Peter is a meekly stuffy upper-crust textbook editor from the Upper East Side. Jerry is a gregariously unsettled urban meanderer. He dwells in one room in a pitiful boarding house on the other side of town.

    In 2004, Albee revisited Peter and Jerry. He put his characters, his script and his story into a time machine called Poetic License and went back to write a first scene. It serves as sort of an extended prologue to The Zoo Story. Peter and his wife tiptoe toward each other until they pounce violently on one horrific tidbit from Peter’s past, and then tiptoe away again. Peter retreats to the park to take a bit of buttoned-up refuge in his tightly-wound solitude. And there, he encounters Jerry, who unwinds the stagnant routine on which Peter depends.

    I’ve read far more plays than I’ve watched and I think that has lead me to look at theater productions through a watching-from-the-wings sort of lens. I struggle to divorce the delivered dialogue from lines that were first printed in a script. I associate the performance with the writing process before considering the on-stage delivery. Sometimes it’s a challenge just to watch actors act without thinking of them as third-party messengers passing along the playwright’s text.

    For this reason, Peter and Jerry was endlessly fascinating to me. There’s nothing I like better than a gimmick of artistic process.

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  • Let your heart be light

    shelftree.jpg

    “Shelf tree” by ijm photography via swissmiss.

    After your stocking is empty and before your Christmas nap, have yourself a merry little Christmas by Injunction with this short story by O. Henry. It was first published one hundred years ago for Christmas, 1907.

    “In Yellowhammer the empty storeroom had been transformed into what might have passed as the bower of an Arizona fairy. The ladies had done their work well. A tall Christmas tree, covered to the topmost branch with candles, spangles, and toys sufficient for more than a score of children, stood in the centre of the floor.”

  • Nostalgia will bring you to your knees in the snow

    If my spirit starts to wane on Christmas Eve Eve, The Snowman, British illustrator Raymond Briggs’ wordless Christmas epic, is the only thing that can save me.

    thesnowman_briggs.jpg

    The picturebook was originally published in 1978 (by Random House in the U.S.) and the animated adaptation first aired on Christmas Eve in 1982 (here is the best scene on YouTube), and the artistry, the accompanying score (composed by Howard Blake), and the story still charm me.

    The tale includes a ride on a retro motorcycle, a visit to the North Pole, a penguin encounter, a cruise ship full of “revelers” drunk on champagne and holiday cheer, childlike humor and an enchanted friendship. The conclusion uses one of my favorite children’s story plot devices: a physical article left behind to prove that the magic is real, not just a dream.

    I really love the Snowman—this particular Snowman—for his roundness. His disproportionate limbs, the inelegant brim of his hat, even his nose. We have a stuffed Snowman that winds up and plays Blake’s Walking in the Air. When the music box starts to wind down, the melody creeps tenderly along to its ending. I know it’s just mechanics, but the effect is perfect.

    I’m holding very tight
    I’m riding in the midnight blue
    I’m finding I can fly so high above with you
    —Howard Blake, Walking in the Air

  • Constance

    I don’t really know what to make of it, though it was so odd that there must be something to be made. It was Wednesday. It was mid-morning. And it was on the subway.

    I was riding the F. I had all my bags in my lap and a New Yorker in one hand and in the other, a travel cup full of coffee that was burning the undersides of all my fingers. I was sitting in a seat on the end of a bench, by one of the doors, the one everybody wants.

    The pages of my magazine were coiled around the spine and I was holding it upright but blatantly, as in not even pretending, not reading it. And that’s why I noticed when Constance came lumbering down the car. She tossed her tote bag on to the pair of seats that face the front of the train and then crashed herself into an empty seat-and-a-half on the opposite side of the train.

    The weary haze across her eyes seemed a veil between her and the other passengers, but it took just a few moments for her to focus in on a guy sitting near by. Her expression sharpened and she shot forward in her seat and implored him to “listen, listen to me. Listen to what I’m saying.”

    Constance rides the F a lot. Constance isn’t her name. It would be a mind-blowing coincidence if it were, anyway.

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