Saturday, November 29, 2008

System restore

I wish I could stretch the 5-10 seconds I get between waking up and placing myself within the general context of things, just before everything boots up and I get that punch to the cortex. Because I need to get some work done, and the pop-ups aren't helping.

I do find it funny though, how my brain seems really annoyed at all the shit the rest of my innards are putting it through, and tries to rip off the band-aid off as quickly as possible. It's like it's going "Hi, I know you don't even remember your name yet, but THAT THING - just a heads-up. Yeah, boo-hoo, now do something constructive."

I also wonder how deep down the rabbit hole you have to go before you start antropomorphising your brain.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Gnyah

This is the last time I try to write about past events based on notes I made at the time. It's nightmarishly tedious, and reads horribly. Also: sticking to just English? Not as easy as it seemed.

I have to be strong though. For James Franco.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Pickled ginger

About to leave for the airport. Looking forward to 12 or so hours in transit. Well, not really, but I'm not too worried about it either - the upside of scouring the smoky side of the emotional spectrum is that boredom's just not an issue.

My last memory of D.C. will probably be taking a short walk to an ATM a block away. Empty streets, a warm-ish breeze, Natalie Merchant's Carnival, and a pretty surprising sense of comfort. I know I can't be liking Washington more than New York - there are laws against that sort of thing - so it's probably the beachhead/safe haven effect.

This one's got proto-tendrils of thought shooting out in all directions, but none of them's giving me anything tangible enough to write down, so this half-assed impression will have to suffice.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Razorslide

I'm used to being unable to utter a single original thought in certain situations. I find it very frustrating, but it's a devil I know. However, I've never been painfully awkward on a tight schedule. Apparently, this sort of pressure-cooker environment results in an expanse of dumbstruck silence concluded with a dazzling verbal sepuku. And so, today I found myself suddenly saying - as in: outloud - "Thank God, I felt so guilty for dragging you all the way here basically just so I could stock up on jerk-off material." To an actual human person.

He laughed, I think - can't say for sure, as the moment I said it my brain froze in horror - but I've never seen anyone in such a hurry to get back to Jersey. Then again, I've never seen anyone on their way back to Jersey, period, so maybe the NSA won't come in the night to neuter me after all.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

NYC, hazy as it is

This empty spot kept bugging me, so here are, at long last, my impressions of New York. I really don't feel like revisiting my notes from that time though, so expect some random crazytalk.

Our hostel was located in Harlem. The only thing I knew about Harlem was that it's supposedly predominatly African-American. That pretty much checked out - during the four days we stayed there, I think I saw only one white dude on the streets. The hostel itself was a different matter - like a pocket universe, very united in its colors of benetton. The guy at the desk was Brazillian, one time I think I heard a Slavic lilt from the kitchen, and I vividly remember two Chinese girls with Louis Vuitton bags taking half an hour to get ready to leave.

On the first day we crossed the Central Park, north to south, by foot. I was on the downswing of my hormonal extravaganza, feeling a bit disconnected and joking on autopilot. It was a cool, bright morning, the park was pretty much empty, Ana and Bohdan were taking their pictures, and all around us loomed those ridiculous, gothic scyscrapers. Finally, we reached the statue of Bethesda, which I was keen to see, as I have pretty much memorized Angels in America. The fountain wasn't flowing. They turned it off for the winter. Ice in the pipes. I remember recalling that line and feeling like I just might lose it. Bohdan picked that moment to take a picture of me. Unfortunately, it's ugly as shit - thereby disproving the myth that sad people make for great photography.

Then we left the park, and the bubble burst - suddenly I was in f-ing New York, there were people everywhere, and those ridiculous, gothic scyscrapers seemed like a really cool place to live once that Nigerian fellow wires me my money. For some reason we kept passing 30 Rock, and eventually even went to the top floor to take pictures of Manhattan at night - though in our defense, I think it was the only purely touristy thing we'd done during those four days.

We spent one evening at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, where I finally got the point of an MC. Mahogany Brown completely blew my mind. She had such amazing grace and energy you just had to laugh, clap, and cheer at everything she said, and she was able to transfer some of that boon to the performers. The slam was followed by an open mic filled with terrible, terrible poetry, which I have successfully repressed since. Left are only the cool things, like a Fillipino girl with a really intriguing piece about how your heritage informs even the minute details of your everyday life - in her case, what she eats for breakfast, as some of the basic foodstuffs are remnants of Spanish, Japanese, and American presence. Or the rapping white girl and her beatboxing black friend - nervous as hell, but still giving off a definite Veronica Mars/Wallace Fennel vibe. Or two German siblings, very earnest in their ghetto style, who kind of reminded me of European capoeira enthusiasts finding themselves in Brazil for the first time.

We also saw some pretty amazing improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, but all my attempts at relaying any of the jokes have failed spectacularly, so I won't even try to do it here. I was really excited that we managed to get in (which was a miracle in itself - we went there kind of on a whim, and there was a huge line of people with reservations), as one of the performers was Kay Cannon, who wrote some of my favorite 30 Rock episodes. Unfortunatley, the improv people never introduced themselves, so I don't even know which one she was. The funniest of them was a girl in glasses with short, dark hair, who said it was her last performance, as she'd just gotten a TV show and was moving to LA. So now, when she becomes the next big thing, I'll be able to say I saw her doing improv back in the day. That is if I ever learn what her name is.

We had amazing (like, really) burgers in the East Village. We went to that huge bookstore... Strand, I think was its name. We went to the NBA store, where I got myself a longsleeve with an actual NBA team logo. Trust me, if you know me - that's funny. We also went to Ground Zero... I'm not really sure what to write about that. I guess the honest thing to say would be that it was totally anti-climactic, but I remember even then feeling kind of weird about treating that place as a tourist attraction. Anyway, it's a construction site like any other. Things are well on their way.

We got ripped off by a Pakistani taxi driver. We zig-zagged between cabs on Times Square. After two days we tapped into that New York pedestrian hive mentality that seems to be only marginally influenced by traffic lights. We saw James Franco on the subway. We went to a lot of trouble to eat pizza from some sort of illegal oven. I imploded on the Brooklyn Bridge. We had cheesecake.

It was a very intense experience. The last memory I have of our NYC adventure is sitting on the bus, heading back to Washington. It was already dark outside, and for a change we weren't stuck in traffic, but instead moving up this 4- or 5-lane river of light. I was rehashing tha last few days, trying to form some cohesive... memories, I guess - and failing, overwhelmed. Bohdan was asleep; Ana could as well have been, given how things were between us, so I was left with all that mental vomit just sloshing around in my skull. It was probably the loneliest I'd felt during the entire trip. But then the song came on, and those lights certainly weren't going to cheaply romanticize themselves, so quickly it also became the most gloriously - and soothingly - self-indulgent. Loneliness is tough, but solitude I can work wonders with.

Quiz me

That's it, too much time has passed for me to figure out the timeline, so this one's going to be more of a mash-up of our last days in Washington before heading for NYC.

I remember visiting Bohdan at the Library of Congress and getting completely lost in the maze of corridors, tunnels, and - I'm pretty sure - teleport pads. Actually, some of those passageways were surprisingly creepy: all concrete, with bare pipes and wires sticking out. I half-expected us to pass a group of military personnel explaining to their superior how they're making great headway with establishing the headquarters, but things being still very much in the air.

In the evening, we went to a quiz at Fado, which is - as you might have guessed from the name - an Irish pub (huh?) The whole quiiz thing was completely new to me. I think it's some anglo-saxon thing. Basically, there's a quizmaster (in our case: a hilarious quizmistress) who reads questions, and every participating table gets an answer sheet, which they discretely fill out. There are several thematic rounds (I think ours had 5) of 10 questions, and then the winner is announced. Right now I can only recall that one of the rounds was about internet domains, and that we failed to identify .cy as Cyprus. And that another one was about Boston Red Sox, which made everyone very annoyed that Marcy Wasn't There (I met Marcy two days later, and only then learned how cool she is, so my level of annoyance wasn't exactly up to par). The whole thing was a whole lot of fun, even if I didn't contribute in any way. Then again, few people did, apart from Adam, who as it turned out is some sort of quiz freak (to the point of being televised).

I also remember visiting some museums with Ana, and having a sort of epiphany. Here's the thing: I first visited the States in 1999. My dad wanted to spend his 50th birthday in New Orleans, and I tagged along, mostly because Tori was on tour and that meant I'd get to see her live. I spent most of that trip in a car, driving from D.C. to New Orleans, and then from New Orleans to New York. In late August. With no air conditioning. Yeah. When I wasn't in the car, I was busy Squandering Opportunities. Sleeping in, instead of going to church to listen to gospel music. Staying in the air-conditioned hotel, instead of taking a - mid-day, mind it - stroll through New Orleans. And, as my father reminded me on our way to the airport, sleeping on a bench in Central Park, instead of going with him to the Museum of Modern Art. I remember sitting on the bench, but I must have blocked out going full-on hobo. What can I say, I was a weird, introverted kid, and none of that stuff seemed all that appealing at the time.

Well, after browsing through a single floor of the National Gallery of Art I found that, though by no means introverted anymore, I'm still definitely not a museum person. And so, while Ana plowed bravely through our cultural heritage, I busied myself crafting the most concise and effortless-seeming declaration I could come up with* (west building), and reading Spook Country (east building).

The next night Bohdan took us to an open mic thing at Busboys and Poets - a bookstore/restaurant/spoken word venue. There were a lot of Obama poems, and loads of stuff about social injustice. I remember feeling very uncomfortable, since I find bad poetry to be really painful (bad performance art of any kind, actually - I'm the sort of person who switches the channel, cause they can't watch Idol contestants embarassing themselves), but squirming and groaning at tales of the white man's oppression just didn't seem like a viable option. In effect, I was wound-up pretty tight, and ready to start explaining how Poland never had any colonies at the drop of a hat. There was also a schizophrenic junkie who did a pretty impressive - at least as far as I got it - poem about crack cocaine. Only in America. Finally, a group poem was passed around the room. Everyone was supposed to add a single line, and I think our party's contribution ended up being reasonably lucid:

the blossoms are falling
the kidneys are failing
But hark, steps are coming up the stairs
It is the season's first case of influenza

There were also peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (really good!), and gloomwings systematically fried by Bohdan's sunshine blasts, which I sorely miss. The blasts that is.

* which I ended up delivering in stump form

Georgetown stinks

That's not an expression. I think it's the rotting leaves from the trees that grow there (not sure about the species) - small, bright yellow, and reeking of shit.

We spent the entire Sunday walking around Washington, chanting "There are many things that make peepee sexy"*. We visisted the local flea market, had lunch at an All-American** diner, and repeatedly fell into the black hole of Urban Outfitters. Though I might be getting my chronology mixed up here - I just know I never want to set foot in that store again. Even if it did give us the brand name Fyaskoe, which is totally the new FAIL! (it's a Polish thing). Now that I think of it, much of that day was spent in various outlets, where Ana looked for the perfect outfit, while Bohdan and me sang along to whatever music was playing, until she had to drag us out to avoid further humiliation. Our specialty was R&B vocal gymnastics, honed to perfection in Abercrombie & Fitch.

We topped the day off with an evening stroll through Georgetown (for olfactory impressions - see title), which is ridiculously opulent, but not too offensive about it, and at times even homey - provided you ignore how much dough was allocated to the "make this shit feel homey" fund. Inspired by all the folks enjoying the finer side of life, on our way home we picked up some AA mac & cheese (vile!), and attempted to eat it watching The Soup and various incarnations of CSI. I'll bet you a molar that whenever you turn on your TV in America, you'll find at least one version of CSI playing on some channel. We actually tested it throughout our stay in the US (much to Bohdan's delight), and it never failed. Meanwhile, The Soup is awesome beyond belief - it's like a digest of the most ridiculous TV moments of the week (reality shows, news, daytime talk shows, etc.), so it's pretty much custom-made for me. I don't remember when I last laughed so hard, though now I only recall a handful of things: the gong commercial, some lady barking at people to interrupt them, and the immortal "And by record I mean... MY VAGINA!" - a phrase that immediately entered our vernacular.

Oh, The Soup, how I'm gonna miss you.

* a phrase we heard on TV, in a segment about the world's SEXIEST BEACHES, or somesuch. The correct spelling is "phi-phi", but that one still shouldn't have made it past editing

** or AA - this symbol will denote all the things I consider part of the American experience, as defined by "stuff I saw on TV"

Klugites

The bar was called Nellie's if I recall correctly, and it was pretty hilarious: crowded, lined with huge plasma screens showing various sporting events and some seriously homoerotic martial arts reality show (I think it's called The Ultimate Fighter, or something. It consists of sweaty half-naked guys hugging each other in a cage - apparently ultimate fighters spend most of their duels deadlocked. Which kind of makes sense, if they all are. Ultimate, I mean. Where was I?) and pictures of sporting teams from various championships. Basically the only way to tell it was a gay sports bar was to read the team names under the photos, as most seemed to go for the pun*.

But the main attractions were the people from Bohdan's scholarship program. It was loud, so I only got to talk to the ones in my immediate vicinity, but my cup still kind of overfloweth...ed. First, there was Vidhya, a hilarious, quick-witted, outspoken Indian chick, who (as we later learned) is totally into Buffy and Firefly, and who at one point got into an attitude-off with someone’s flatmate (gay talk-to-the-hand vs. ethnic oh-no-you-DIDN'T), complete with snapping fingers and The Zigzag Head Thing**. Then there was the impeccably dressed, gorgeous Natalie from the UK, who always spoke with this sort of melodic, slightly detached lilt ("naugh-TAY"), and seemed plucked straight from a modern-day Titania's entourage. Finally, there was Adam. And suddenly my trip to the US morphed into The Time I Met That Guy, Oh, And I Went to New York, Too. There are many ways of looking at it, and I think went through them all over the next couple of days, but most of that was still to come, and that evening was definitely one of the highlights of this entire escapade.

* okay, there was also a psychedelic cherub fresco on the ceiling

** you know what I mean

Trip + Washington

[Fair warning: I'm compiling these from cryptic bullet points, on the plane back to Europe, with a huge Italian dude occasionally reading over my shoulder]

The flight was long, but pretty uneventful. At the Frankfurt airport, my innate authority phobia kicked in, and when asked if I had purchased anything, I blurted out "A bagel..." and then added guiltily "...but I ate it." The official maintained his composure admirably. I watched Wall-E (the tiny, shitty in-flight entertainment screen REALLY did it justice. Sigh.) And that's about it.

The moment we arrived in Washington, I entered a state of permanent, low-level anxiety. I think the light went off when we were waiting in line to be cleared by the Department of Immigration, and had to endure a looped video of mind boggling American propaganda. Normally this would be cause for delight and mockery, but everyone around us reined themselves in after the initial burst of giggles, all too aware that the immigration officer can send your ass back wherever pretty much on a whim. To illustrate how arbitrary the whole process is: my guy, a weary, matter-of-fact African-American gentleman, asked me but two questions and gave me a June departure deadline, while Ana got grilled on how she met Bohdan (Oh, it's an epic tale of romance and adventure...) and was kindly asked to leave by February.

I don't think I ever shook off this weird guardedness. Don't take the kid's picture. Don't talk about race. Try not to do accents. It was all the more surreal since back home my circle of friends is notorious for its lack of political correctness, so my auto-censorship module is pretty rusty. We ended up just using Polish whenever discussing potentially inflammatory subjects. It turned out to be a surprisingly engaging exercise, since we've gotten so used to interspersing it with English expressions.

I remember the taxi driver being Indian (or Pakistani, I've no way of knowing, being a former Commie), and that was the case every time we took a cab, so it really is some sort of national (regional?) monopoly. At night, the outskirts of Washington seemed almost European (by which I mean: generic). Though maybe I was merely projecting, cause I remember being strangely comforted by the sight of a Siemens neon sign. It only registered with me that I'm actually on the other side of the pond, when I heard police sirens. It might sound naive, but to me sirens have really become the soundtrack of Washington. I've never heard so many in my life. And while in Poland they almost always signal the approach of an ambulance, here it was usually police cars. Even if you adjust for cavalcades, that's still pretty freaky.

Bohdan greeted us with open arms, declaring that I'll have to sleep on a wooden pillow* and cover myself with a towel (he told Ana to bring a sleeping bag, but neglected to CC me with that particular piece of information). It was kind of cold, so I finally got to feel like a scout. And now I know why I decided to miss out on that experience.

The next morning we walked him to work and set out to conquer the Mall of America. I have to admit I've no idea why it's called that (or even if it's the official name), but that's exactly what it is - all the national landmarks conveniently clustered in one area. We took the requisite Capitol, White House, and Washington Monument pictures, and paid a visit to Lincoln, but I was excited the most by the discovery of the Ordoss Embassy (pictured left). Then we picked Bohdan up from the library and went home to get ready to go to a gay sports bar (yeah, that's not a joke), where one of his co-workers was having a birthday party.

to be continued

* most of the pillows in his apartment had WOODEN EMBROIDERY, so every night was potentially an adventure, with lacerations but a twitch away