emlocke

emlocke logo with teal letter 'k'

  • Not sure what I was planning to do with my cell phone in a subway tunnel anyway

    One night last summer, I went out for a girls-only night in a silky black skirt and a pair of four-inch heels. I don’t know what made me reach for those shoes, but I put them on as though it was entirely ordinary. Just as though it was entirely ordinary for me to go out in a whole flock of chicks.

    I was all good for the first two hours, which we spent on stools at one place and then perched around a table at another bar. I didn’t last long on the dance floor, though. Even standing still, I felt like individual bones in my feet were breaking in quick succession. If I sat down alone to take a break, I became the target of smarmy guys out on boys’ nights with their wingmen.

    There comes a point when discomfort makes me cranky and when I reached that point, I bailed on the girls. And that’s how I found myself waiting for the train at Second Avenue with two hobos passed out on the bench and a handful of 20- and 30-somethings calling it a night.

    Nearly breathless from the pain that shrieked from my shins to my toes, I limped to the bottom of the platform stairs and hoisted myself on to the silver railing. It wasn’t a comfortable perch, but if I draped across it at a certain angle and sat up straight, I could keep my balance and give my feet a break.

    And if I hooked the heels over the lower crossbar, it bore the dead weight of my feet and eased the throbbing agony.

    Once I got situated, I flipped my cell phone open. But I must have overflipped because it flew out of my hand. It was a reflex to reach out and try to catch it. My upper body forgot that my lower body was essentially incapacitated. I pitched forward like a top heavy ventriloquist dummy and hit the filthy cement floor knees first, my shoes still latched on to the railing. Like I’d been strung up by my ankles.

    To untangle myself, I had to twist to one side, scraping the back of my thigh on the ground just to get my feet to join my butt on the floor. I felt about as graceful as a beached whale. In stilletos. And a miniskirt.

    A few people shot sympathetic glances in my direction (the sound of 130ish pounds of girl and evening bag dropping to the floor from midair had drawn attention). I also caught a few rolled eyes that said, “Hail a paddy wagon. Next stop: Drunk Tank!” I resisted the urge to announce, “I’m not a drunk! I’m just a klutz!” I just smiled. And climbed back up on the railing. That time, I managed to catch myself before I hit the floor, and then I sat right down on the steps.

    The bruise on my left knee lasted for two weeks. It was shaped like Australia.

    I swore off those shoes. Last night, I left them in front of my building in a cardboard box, along with a few shrunken knit tops and a pair of old PJ pants. By morning, they were gone for good.

  • This is what I see on the way out of my bedroom

    One thing I have tried to do in my apartment, both out of necessity and desire is decorate and accessorize with objects and images that look beautiful to me even if they aren’t high art.

    This is the north wall-lette of my bedroom. It’s pretty narrow (the door is just to the right) and impeded by both the radiator and the light switch. It also gets a lot of sun through the three large windows on the front wall.

    I didn’t want to hang a print here because it might fade from exposure. It would have been awkward to place one individual item with the light switch in the way of any symmetry.

    The first thing I did was change out the switch plate. The gold one that was here when I moved in clashed with the silver coating on the radiator. I don’t think my landlord thinks himself an interior designer, but hello! That’s a catastrophic aesthetic error. I bought the matte white switch plate at Target or Home Depot for less than three dollars. I couldn’t have any distraction from the aged Victorian radiator.

    The zinc letter E is from, yes, Anthropologie‘s monogram collection (8″ high, $18; 25″ high, $98). I staked out two different stores for two weeks until I found one with perfect texture imperfections. I really like the “drop-shadow” it casts on the wall in the early afternoon.

    I got those four silver frames on clearance at Urban Outfitters last winter. They were meant to be magnetic, but the tiny disc magnets on the back had all popped either out or in leaving holes—which happened to be perfect for hanging on flathead nails. I think I spent about $10.82 on two sets of two. They are very lightweight and I wouldn’t want anybody from Antiques Roadshow to see how faux they look up close, but I love the baroque-y shape.

    I’m really crazy about what’s in the frames, though, and this is where the “use whatever looks beautiful” philosophy comes in. I replaced the halftone portraits of Ghandi with images clipped out of catalogs. You can decorate more than the coffee table with junk mail!

    On the left is a deep purple velvet tufted chair that I saw in an Urban Outfitters catalog. I cut it in two, so it’s pretty obvious what’s in the photo if you look at just the top half, but the bottom half is meaningless without it’s mate. On the right is a scrap from a J. Crew catalog. They did a photoshoot with lots of distressed furniture in a pristine living room, and one model posed beside this slender, white table with peeling paint and a chandelier on its side on the table top.

    On their own, none of the framed clippings would mean much. Even as a set they don’t really convey a distinct message other than, “This is Emily’s aesthetic style, and since she can’t afford any upholstered furniture or a chandelier and she doesn’t have room for furniture that serves only one purpose, she decorates with pictures of all of those things.”

  • Fatigued acolyte

    On the white altar
    I served the Lord, my God, by
    Yawning with mouth shut.

  • Amp&rsAnd

    The ampersand is my favorite punctuation mark.


    From Sarah France.

    Technically, it’s a logogram, which is a written symbol that stands for a complete word or phrase. The ampersand represents the word and.


    From Swiss Miss.

    Its shape has evolved in different directions over time, but it was originally printed as a ligature of the letters in the Latin word for and: the capital E and the lowercase t.


    From Andrew Young.

    In a brief biography of their “middle name,” typography designers Hoefler & Frere-Jones write, “the ampersand is considerably older than many of the letters that we use today . . . one appears in Pompeiian graffiti, establishing the symbol at least as far back as A.D. 79.”


    From otherthings.

    I think what I like most is that the ampersand often resembles a capital letter E. As in Emily.

  • “Most things look better when you put them in a circle”

    I’m testing the theory put forth by Banksy in this trite and yet oft referenced drawing.

    Well, I guess it couldn’t look any worse.

  • Tools for navigating the human condition

    Get what you came for.
    Then get out. Get Gone. Get far.
    Stop. Go back for more.

  • Wonderland cake message

    I have the cranial throbs of caffeine withdrawal, the scent of the powderfresh deodorant that I packed by accident is suffocating, I’m so thirsty that it feels like my tongue is tied in a knot in the back my mouth, my feet are going tingly from extreme air conditioning, and my sciatic nerve is burning a line from my tailbone to my hip.

    I can’t imagine being in much worse shape for an interstate bus ride (though I’m glad I’m not hungover like the two morons next to me. The title of this post is a clue to a crossword puzzle that these guys are working together. They are totally stuck on that one. Should I give them a hint?).

    And yet, I’m riding north on Interstate 95 at about 65 MPH, and even with the sun’s glare in the corner of my eye, it’s not all that bad. My discomfort has been eased somewhat by the clean, firm seat, the excellent traffic conditions, the broken Starlight mint that I found in my wallet, and the free. Wireless. Internet.

    Funny how the signal was stronger going through the tunnel in Baltimore than it was on the open road just beyond Joppa, Maryland.

    Boltbus is a new-this-year mass transit coach with service to and from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. New-this-year means the buses themselves are new. I didn’t find three years worth of crumbs in the crack between the seats and all the passenger air vents are in working order. The seats are [p]leather, so they’re less likely to absorb passenger odors overtime.

    Oh, and the bus has a wireless receiver on board (a few new bus services offer internet access, but Boltbus is the only one I read about with power outlets for charging laptops or cell phones, too).

    I’ve avoided buses (and any mode of transportation that doesn’t provide at least a few more amenities than a reclining seat and an even number of wheels) since one miserable night on a one-lane expressway in New Zealand, but my Boltbus experience hasn’t triggered any traumatic flashbacks.

    The clientèle seems pretty diverse agewise and my fellow passengers are definitely not all technology geeks. That must be because the free WiFi isn’t the only perk—ticket prices start at around $10 and increase as the bus fills up. I booked my trip at the last minute for a holiday weekend and I paid less than $50, including the processing fee, to get to DC and back.

    Beverage service wouldn’t hurt, is all I’m saying.

    (A “Wonderland cake message” is “eat me.”)

  • One country, caught in a rebel birthday shout

    We were saying that you did the best you could.
    —Party Generation, Dar Williams

    We went down to the DC waterfront to watch watch the fireworks from Will’s coworkers’ boat, The Reckless Abandon, II. We had brownies, beer, and a blast.

    Fireworks do not photograph well.

  • I settled for a front stoop

    In an unexpected coincidence, Caitlin’s twin brothers are visiting at our apartment the same weekend that I’m down in DC to visit my brother. As Caitlin helped Neil unfold the futon last night, I threw my full line of hair and skin care products into a suitcase, knowing that I had to go well prepared.

    Is it the difference between men and women or the four year age gap that tells me Caitlin’s brothers can come to New York knowing they’ll be provided for, but I feel compelled to travel as though I’m bound for the Peace Corps when I go to stay at my brother’s house?

    I made absolutely sure to pack extra hair elastics because I don’t want to be stranded in a house full of boys with my hair stuck to the back of my neck.  I think I brought three different kinds of moisturizing lotion for a two-day trip. On top of that, my mother sent a bag for me down with other friends of Will’s: the Aerobed, a set of sheets, a bath towel, a pillow (which I recognize, by its lopsided shape, from my own bed at home), and three Diet Cokes. (Also, an artifact from my grandmother’s house: a faded pack of playing cards with classic literary figures on their faces.)

    And after all that, Will has proven my theory wrong. Will has inquired after my health, carried my luggage, and offered to take the air mattress so I could have his bed. Since arriving in Washington, I’ve been offered a sandwich on whole wheat (and a bottle of water!), handed a prepaid metro card, fed a slice of our mom’s homemade banana bread.

    My brother has this chair on his front porch. It only has one arm, but it’s rugged, solid. No wobble. I knew I wasn’t cut out for the Peace Corps anyway.

  • My superpower is: I am impervious to external and internal distractions

    I think my grandmother can smell electricity. Is that crazy? Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe she’s crazy. I guess it does sound crazy, but I really do believe that the unidentifiable aroma she claims to detect sporadically in arbitrary locations are electrical currents sparking around her.

    I heard about her bizarre sensory phenomenon several months ago when I was at home for a weekend and Grandmom came up to the house to visit. My mom asked her about the funny smell (they must have discussed it before) and Grandmom reported that she noticed it at indiscriminate moments—sometimes near the stove, sometimes in the hallway, sometimes in the car. She couldn’t name the scent and couldn’t pin down a source.

    A bit later, my mom booted up the dinosaur PC in our family room. She might have wanted to look up “imaginary odor” on WedMD (or I might be making that part up). I heard the computer crank up and Grandmom said, just then, “Now, there it is again. How odd.”

    “There what is?”

    “The smell,” Grandmom said. She sniffed. The PC hummed and whirred beside her.

    “It’s the electricity,” I said. Grandmom must be picking up on collective bursts of electrical power.

    “Oh, no it’s not,” my mom said as she Googled “insane asylum” +”family weekend retreat.” Okay, I made that part up.

    Right or wrong, my diagnosis makes me ponder what super sense I’d want if I could choose one. I don’t think I need to smell electricity. It’s driving my grandmother crazy. I thought about smelling trouble, but I know that would cause nothing but trouble. I wish I could sniff out my size on sale.

    All this was called to mind by George Saunders’ shout and murmur in last week’s New Yorker. “Antiheroes” is about a world full of people who think they have superpowers but don’t.

    Not only do they not have superpowers, but the superpowers they think they have aren’t actually that super. A cheerleader feels entitled to be “impervious to physical harm.” The boy who can throw a wad of paper into the trashcan thinks he ought to be able to make every shot. His grandfather believes he can make it to the bathroom in time, every time, because he remembers that he used to be able to and yeah, wasn’t that nice?

    As I read the piece, I kept thinking of that half-glib, half-wise expression that defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”