via Design Crush
Henry Miller wrote a self-published novel called Into the Nightlife, which inspired Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry collection, A Coney Island of the Mind, which inspired the images of New York City nightlife in Cyndi Lauper’s new single, Into the Nightlife, coming out this month.
Shot up like a satellite
Into the night
—Into the Nightlife, Cyndi Lauper
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 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.
Seen in Prospect Park this weekend:
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.
Twenty-five lessons
– Proper broom sweeping technique
– When I get a raise, that means it’s time to work harder
– That it’s a woman’s responsibility to step in and out of an elevator first, otherwise she just holds everything up while men are trying to be polite
– The grammatical difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’
– That it’s entirely unacceptable to have the tag of my underwear showing
– That most people only read what will confirm what they already know
– Not to read just to confirm what I already know
– That it’s okay to hate apologizing, but I still have to do it
– That I deserve a man, not a boy
– It’s just not the same to record the game and watch it later
– To wash the car from the roof down
– To tolerate feeling a little hot in the summer and a little cold in the winter
– When someone calls me a ‘bad word,’ it’s not necessary to repeat that word excessively when I tattle on them
– To take at least a moment to be proud of myself when I know I deserve it
– If one thing isn’t working, try something else
– To check my work
– If my passenger has to wonder whether or not I’ve seen the stop sign or light, I’m approaching it too quickly
– Just do the best that I can
– Find a hobby; when the passion fades, find a new one
– How to fold a newspaper
– The posted speed limit is the speed limit, not the discretionary ballpark speed guideline
– There isn’t always a reason; sometimes I just have to trust my instincts
– To take the time to “just look” out the window sometimes, at everything and at nothing
– To offer wine to dinner guests
– To appreciate music without lyrics
For years after my parents stopped tucking me in, my mom or my dad continued to look in on me after my lights were out. I think a lot of parents do that, take that moment to make sure all is safe and sound, that their child isn’t staying up too late to read under the covers, to say a silent goodnight, to see peacefulness on a sleeping face.
I got caught reading under the covers. I was also known to sit up until all hours, unable to put down a crafty project, trying on all my dress-up clothes, or sifting reverently through shoe boxes of toys and trinkets, taking inventory of treasures the way children do.
While I played in the dim light from my closet, I listened for a parent’s footsteps. I learned the warning groan of the floorboards a few steps shy of my bedroom door, and I learned to leap into bed and feign sleep with minimal mattress creaking. Oh I got caught, but sometimes I fooled the watchdogs.
And yet, there were nights when I took comfort in knowing that I’d have company for just a moment in the night. As I got even older, I would remind my mom to “come check on me” every now then. When something upset me and I felt vulnerable, I wanted someone else to stand watch. I guess I’d be the type of cowgirl to sleep with one eye open unless I could count on someone else to look out for trouble on the prairie.
There were nights when I couldn’t fall asleep anyway. My mom would crack open the door and I would say, “Mom,” because I’d been expecting her but she wouldn’t expect to find me lying awake in the dark.
“Why are you still up?” she’d ask.
“I don’t know. I can’t sleep.” She would tuck the covers tighter or press both thumbs in circles against my forehead or kiss my cheek right up next to my ear and tell me goodnight again, hoping it would take. I remember one night when I called out to her before she closed the door again.
“I’m craving something. But I don’t know what.” Her silhouette braced itself in the doorway and she sighed. “I think it might be coffee.” I was maybe nine. Maybe ten. I don’t remember what she said; I don’t even know what I would say to a child who told me she was having indefinable cravings in the middle of the night.
I’d probably tell her, “Nice try, but you’ve had your last glass of water, your last bedtime story, and your last goodnight kiss. Go. To. Sleep.”
But I maintain to this day that I wasn’t just stalling that night. I really craved something—something—whatever it was.
I felt what New Yorker writer Judith Thurman expressed when she wrote, “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never been to, perhaps more homesick than for a familiar ground.” Or Frank O’Hara, who wrote, “When do you want to go / I’m not sure I want to go there / where do you want to go / any place / I think I’d fall apart any place else” in ‘Metaphysical Poem.’
I was maybe nine. Maybe ten. My first restless night of metaphysical angst.
Did you know that there are two types of accents that change the way a vowel is pronounced? An accent that slants up from left to right marks the stressed vowel, like the Spanish word for song: canción. The emphasis falls on the o at the end of the word.
An accent that down from left to right lengthens or shortens the vowel sound in some languages and lifts or drops the vowel sound in others. In some romance languages, that symbol marks an open vowel (the sound is pronounced with the tongue dropped low, away from the roof of the mouth). Crème brûlée is a French word that hasn’t been assimilated into the English language. The accent over the first e in brûlée indicates an open vowel sound at the end of the word.
The interesting thing is that both types of accent are named with a word that can also describe a critical health condition: acute and grave, respectively. Acute is more of a technical term; grave is sort of on the dramatic side. But both words describe both punctuation marks and medical status.
Isn’t that like, crazy, how it worked out like that? Do you think they picked those names on purpose?
Return to Texas
Re-remember my birthplace.
Here I come, lame duck.
I heard thrilling news at work today. I’m going to San Antonio for a conference in November! It will be just a few weeks after a new president is elected, and George W. Bush, who has cast a bit of a pallor over one of my favorite autobiographical facts for the last seven and a half years, will by then just be waiting out the last of his last term.
I’ve always been proud that I was born in Texas. Not many kids in Connecticut come from too far west of the Ohio River or south of the Mason-Dixon line. Having San Antonio on my birth certificate, learning to crawl while my parents kept their eyes open for scorpions and roly-poly bugs (delicious!), playing in patches of bluebells, riding around the Alamo in a stroller, teething on tortillas—these things made my infancy and toddlerhood special. I love that I was once a yellow rose.