pretending to sleep,,,

I heard an old man talking on the phone say, in a thick Jersey accent, "If you wanna read the most disturbing thing this week, go pick up NEW YORK MAGAZINE. Ya' know, at a bodega or somethin'!" I walked across the street and looked for it in a deli - I flipped through the pages and found nothing too scary. I still find myself wondering what article he was talking about! If you think you know, let me know. 

On the train back from Montreal on tuesday, my friend and I sat in the dining car for 6 hours. We were laughing a lot and being rather loud. There was an unattended 11 year old boy sitting behind me, playing videogames on an Ipad or something. He kept looking at us and I said to my friend that we were probably annoying him. The kid took off his large headphones and turned around to say, "YOU'RE NOT ANNOYING ME!" He then kept repeating himself. "Seriously, you're not annoying." "No, I don't CARE." 

My friend Ethan asked me if I ever pretend to sleep and I said no. He said he pretends to sleep when other people are milling about the room or apartment. I think I've probably done this only to avoid something. I do remember pretending to sleep one time when I was mad at a boy and I wanted to see how far he'd go believing I was asleep. He didn't try very long to "wake me up" but I was relieved he didn't get a smirk out of me. I'm usually very bad at acting. I forget why I was mad at him and why I thought pretending to be in a deep sleep at 4pm would solve anything. With the same boy, I fell asleep on his sofa watching a boring movie. I was genuinely asleep but I woke up as he carried me to bed. I pretended to sleep then, I think, but he could tell I had woken up. 

I don't know why I told Ethan I don't pretend to sleep but as I remember more and more occasions where I have pretended to sleep, I realize thatI do it quite often but usually in spite of someone. It sounds to me that his version of pretending to sleep is much more meditative and relaxing. That he just lies there to hear doors open and close, toilets flushing, sinks running, and the normal little noises of the morning. He says he even pretends to sleep when he's alone which is just weird to me. I couldn't give myself a reason to do this. I usually just wake up and don't acknowledge the bridge between asleep and awake that precisely. I wake up like people in antidepressant commercials. 

I decided to read fiction finally. I counted and read 24 nonfiction books in a row. Ethan had convinced me to buy Birds of America by Lorrie Moore.I've known her name since I was a kid. I can picture her books in my living room growing up or in the back of my mom's car. I read the first two stories and I don't know what to think. I'm just having a hard time reading fiction in general. 

I was walking home from the grocery store today when a skater boy I slept with rode his board in front of me, cutting me off. We walked and talked. He invited me for a beer but I declined because I wanted to make sandwiches with the meat I brought back from Montreal. I sat on my living room floor with my food and watched Home Alone 2 and texted the skater boy asking him to throw a beer into my window. He said I don't drink beer, which is true, but it sounded really really good with my salami and sour cream sandwich. 

-m

in montreal

Arrived in Montreal Thursday evening after a long 12 hour train ride from New York. The journey went by quickly as I spent most of my time in the food car eating hot dogs and staring out the window at the  Adirondack mountains. I fell asleep with my face on the table listening to the only other two people in the dining car talk about the housing market. I had predicted that I'd spend all 12 hours reading but the truth came to be that I read only 10 pages. I even tried to do the crossword but my focus only extended so far.

My friend and I arrived in Montreal and immediately began to analyze the city as if we had been here for years. Comparing and contrasting it to other places we have been. The first thing that bothered me, which for some reason didn't bother me 5 years ago, was Montreal's clear attachment to France, especially Paris. It smells strongly of desperation here, a desperation to be magnificently and culturally different from its neighbors. For example, Starbucks is called, "Café Starbucks" in Paris, it's just called "Starbucks". There seems to be a dire need to flaunt the city's European culture but there is a strong lack of evidence to prove the city's case. The mom n' pop shops are designed to look like Sweetgreens and no one seems to enjoy having a glass of wine and a cigarette. Not that those things make or break a city but if Montreal has such a strong sense of cultural sisterhood with Paris, or even France as a whole, they have a lot of work to do. Or undo. 

The people in Montreal are all incredibly kind. There is a warm sensation interacting with the people here. It reminds me of Chicago in the way that the midwestern identity humbles the metropolitan culture. There is something strangely rural about Montreal that makes me homesick for the cornfields and eccentricities of southern Ohio. Montreal is not too dissimilar from Chicago and Ohio...it may even have an essence of Grand Rapids. 

I've been sad here. I feel unamused and deflatedby this city. I feel frustrated by the things that are on pause back in New York but also frustrated by the way Montreal functions. I think I need to take a vacation that is either in a more bustling, stimulating, culturally sensational in comparison to New York type city, or, go to a rural, isolating, meditative sort of environment. The original plan was to go to Iceland for a week but my finances escaped me. 

I can't wait to be back in NY. It truly does feel like home. I never get this homesick - usually not even at all. I spent a month alone in Tokyo and not an ounce of homesickness ran through me. I went to Europe for a month and the most homesick I felt was when I heard my neighbor playing piano in Berlin and then I too so badly wanted to play piano. Homesickness for me usually comes about in the senses and I don't really ever miss people. When I was maybe 9 years old at a summer camp in northern Michigan, nestled into the sand dunes and on the shore of a silent lake, I distinctively remember only ever feeling homesickness when Dave Matthews Band came out from the camp counselors private cabin. My mom loved DMB.

 Overall, I am having a good time here. I'm laughing a lot and indulging in things I don't normally. Eating out for breakfast and what have you. 

I went to a thrift store to find my friend a sweater or a t-shirt but I realized I'm terrible at buying people clothes. I ended up buying a lavender turtleneck, for myself. I bought two packs of cigarettes and flirted with the waiter at the pizza restaurant. He flirted back but once someone starts flirting with me I become a mute. 

-m

screaming woman, good luck charm, autumn running

My dear friend Violet called me the other evening to let me know she was in the park across the street from my apartment. She asked if I'd join her and I said no, that I was comfortable on my couch, drinking wine, watching the news. She decided that sounded nice too. When she walked in, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a little yellow plastic creature and tossed it across my living room. Here, take this she said. A bunch of people have been passing it around, it's a good luck charm. I put it in my pocket, excited for its  powers.

I had heard through the grapevine that an Italian man I have known for a few years is now single and interested in me. I got his phone number and texted him. He responded some hours later and we planned to have a drink the following evening. It just so happened to be his birthday the day I reached out. The evening of our planned meeting, I texted him around 6pm and he never texted back. I wasn't hurt more than I was annoyed.
I decided that I'd go see Midsommar, the movie that literally everyone is talking about this week. "How are you?" has been replaced by, "Have you seen Midsommar?" All that I've been saying to people regarding the film is that it's not a good movie but that they should go see it.

Going to Montreal a week from today for a long weekend. My friend R. and I are visiting her friend, H. We don't really have much of a plan other than to just relax, maybe find a place to swim. I'm secretly most excited about the train ride there and back. I heard online that it's a very beautiful ride. I went to Montreal once in high school with my friend Sophie. We went for our senior year spring break while the rest of the class went to Florida. We drove from Ohio to New York so we could see Bjork play at Carnegie Hall. We then drove up to Maine to drink coffee and look at the ocean. The water was much too cold to swim. Our last big stop was in Montreal, where we visited my friend Kathryn, who was studying at McGill. I don't remember much of what the city looked like. It was snowy and I got pulled over for turning right on a red light. We ate sushi, I think. One night, in Kathryn's large and charming apartment, we fell asleep with the windows open. The sounds of yelling college students and drunk escapades lulled me to sleep in the living room. Between asleep and awake, a scream had caught my attention and gradually lifted me into awareness. Kathryn came out of her bedroom and she looked at me with an intense silence. The scream wasn't outside, it was in fact in her stairwell. An unforgettable, paralyzing scream. A scream I had in that moment realized I had never heard. A horror movie-in-real-life scream. The screaming woman was yelling at someone but we heard no other voice. Fists banging on a glass paned door, screaming, screaming screaming. Kathryn called the cops and in the meantime, the screaming kept up. 2 minutes later - dead silence. We looked out Kathryn's window which faced the street. The cop car was empty and into our frame of view came the woman, shaking, talking to a police officer. One of the two cops opened the car door and the screaming woman who was no longer screaming gently entered the car, hands free with her head up. That's most of what I remember of Montreal.

I just finished reading Joan Didion's White Album. Many people over the years have persisted that I read it. I didn't like Slouching Towards Bethlehem all that much but I would consider The Year of Magical Thinking one of the best books I've read. I didn't care much for White Album once it was over. I don't care much for the 60's or the 70's. People back then, especially men, seemed really stupid based on the little I have read and watched and learned. It really bothers me. I also hate the imagery of that time. I had a brief moment where the clothing was inspiring to me but now that regurgitated fad is irrelevant and it repulses me. While reading White Album, I found myself squirming a lot. I liked the last essay, however, about the orchids and Malibu.

This Summer is not so good so far. It feels as though the energy has been sucked out of just about everyone that I know. Not in the usual post-beach exhausted-ness that is actually rather comforting, but as if everyone's motivation and excitement has been sucked out of them entirely. There is a dull-ness to this Summer that I don't think has much potential to shift or change or evolve before Autumn comes. My friends are blue, the air is thick, no one seems to want to eat. The parties feel more like chores and doing laundry feels like a punishment. It's simply this Summer's mood. This Summer's identity. It's the theme that when remembered will be the antithesis of the decade's final Summer: Dead.

That being said, there is one thing I do like about this Summer. I like the way that everyone seems the be extremely sick of one another. It's in many ways entertaining compared the companionship and  camaraderie I witnessed last Summer. The dreadfulness of everyone's presence is actually keeping drama at bay because no one wants to even sour their time interacting with one another. I can only imagine how things will look when Autumn comes around. I'm daydreaming of putting on my coat and stockings, reading outside without beads of sweat dripping onto the pages. Food tasting good again and hangovers not being as bad. I can't wait for the sun to go down at a reasonable hour and for it to rise when I like to wake up. To walk into my living room in the morning and not be hit by a wave of heat from keeping the air conditioners off. To take warm baths again and for my skin to be cleared of all the humid dirt that rests on my face. I long for the not-so-far days of normalcy. Summer feels like one long weekend.

The party ended this year before it started.

Need to get ready for work tonight at the movie theater. I hope my crush comes in and says hi. I tried to convince him the other night to go watch Takashi Miike's, Audition but I don't believe he did.

-m.

foggy open mouthed

Been going out a lot lately and unraveling more and more. Saying too much or saying too little. No drama but lots of strong reactions from me and those around me. Was walking home with two bottles of wine when a skater hollered at me from the park benches across from my apartment. It took me a moment to find him in my memory but I found him. I met him with another skater who I had a short affair with. What a silly time. I should've kept it to myself but after sitting on my roof for an hour, I slipped that secret out about his friend and I. My friends who were all there on my roof with us seemed ambivalent about my open mouth - which I am sure they are used to. 

I did, however, refuse to indulge in heavy emotions earlier in the night amongst a vulnerable and weary crowd. There was some fog in the air that some wanted cleared - to know how I felt about a certain relationship in the room. But I kept my mouth closed and just pretended it was all rainbows and daisies like the midwestern housewife I can be sometimes. I then actually began to feel fine about the whole thing and the fog cleared. Now I know what to do ! :)