New perspectives

 

 A few days ago I wrote a self-pitying blog post about how I don't feel like I have time to think anymore.  Can't afford the gym and am compelled to graze all night, so I feel like a fat-ass. Can't find new music to listen to.  Can't find a book compelling enough to finish.  Can't even fathom the idea of sitting down to write something meaningful.  Between work and home I feel like I have nothing else to give, so I was becoming accustomed to the idea that this was just how life would be, that you just kind of give up on everything else and keep your head down and watch your body become that of an old person.

I've been revisiting that draft post in the last few days, and I think I've done a pretty good job of taking concrete steps to combat it.  To wit:

1. I joined the gym at work and signed up for two classes on Sunday.  I went for the first time yesterday and it kicked my ass.  My body is sore all over the place now.  I felt so happy to be moving and sweaty.  At one point we were doing push-ups and the floor around me was slick with sweat that I could barely keep my bearings.  The last time I was in this gym was in 2005, in a boxing class that I loved, and it was a very odd sense memory to return to this place in a completely different life.  While I feel guilty about being away from the family during that chunk of time on Sundays, I think it's worth it in the long run, especially since A is usually napping and L can use the time to herself.

2. I bought "David Copperfield" at the bookstore and so far I'm loving it.  I was trying to read all these contemporary books that just felt very transitory and slight.  I like reading something that has endured, and Dickens is weirdly accessible to me -- it is popular entertainment, after all.  I'm excited to have one big fat book to chew on for the next two months.

3. Alice and I are doing a dance class at Alvin Ailey on Sunday mornings.  Bringing Alice to the studios where I used to do hip hop is hilarious.  Yesterday I could hear a hip hop class thumping in the room next door to us and it broke my heart (as we ran around with jingle bells tied to our wrists and sang songs about butterflies).  But I like having our own little thing together, and Alice enjoys it and I think it's helpful to teach her the basics of rhythm and movement.  L noted that Alice has been nicer to me since we started doing the class together -- it's our own little adventure, her and I.  The funny thing is that I feel weirdly competitive with the other little kids and their parents (mothers), like I want the teacher to be impressed that I've mastered these exercises designed for 2 year olds.  See me twirl the scarf!  I know what sound a froggy makes!  Watch me gallop!

4. Yesterday we also went to see the big new public art spectacle down at Columbus Circle, in which a Japanese artist has built a living room around the statue of Christopher Columbus on top of a six-story obelisk in the middle of the intersection.  I found the piece more powerful and compelling than I expected.  It was neat to see this old hunk of marble up close, and the views were great.  It raised interesting questions about private ownership of public art/spaces.  And it was amusing to watch Alice ignore the tremendous statue dominating the space so she could flip through the coffee table book at its feet. 

And that's it.  Right now I'm just trying to fight entropy and reclaim some things about life that I enjoy.  If it doesn't happen now, before this new baby comes, then I think we're in trouble.

Michael Jackson

I always felt a connection with MJ. As a kid, I found the fact that he had the same name as me confusing, but vaguely positive. Whenever my parents played "Beat It," I would start dancing furiously in a move that came to be known as the "Boot-head Shuffle." Even now, when I hear those first few strains of the song -- those guitar chords pulsing relentlessly, the drum kicking in -- I still feel the ghostly echoes of whatever that old feeling was. Whatever the feeling is that makes a three year old plaster on a scowl and then dance like his ass is on fire for the next four minutes. When I heard "Beat It," I didn't even know the force that was driving me, but lord knows that same thing still pushes me forward every day. I must have heard "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" around that time -- I remember thinking how cool it was that Michael Jackson had a tiger on his album cover -- but nothing shook me up like "Beat It."

Only later did I go backwards to his earlier work -- the disco perfection of "Rock With You," "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough." (Hell, only a couple months ago did I hear "P.Y.T." and think to myself, wow, this song is great.) The kid who did those songs, the kid dancing with his big smile in a '70s spacesuit amid the green laser lights, is the one we've all been mourning. He seems so fresh and talented and new, even now, even knowing everything we do. As an obnoxious seventh grader I wrote a paper about MJ and how weird he was, and why that might be. His decline was such a horrible spectacle. Our shameless pleasure in watching him destroy himself was only tempered by the knowledge that real kids actually seemed to be getting hurt. Had he died tragically in, say, 1992, can you imagine the sterling legacy he would have left? Nothing worse than a few weird habits, a chimp, strange but harmless.

But then again, if he departed in 1992 we might not have had "Remember the Time," and that was my song. Also his later stuff -- "Break of Dawn" and "Butterflies" breathed some life into his music on the contemporary R&B charts.

He was a tragic figure, but there was a time, a time of "Off the Wall" and "Thriller" and the Boot-head Shuffle, when he seemed to capture everything that was great about music and let everybody else experience it, too. He was the genesis. At hip hop on Wednesday night we did "Thriller" as a tribute, and coming up this week is "Remember the Time," but our teacher took a few minutes to talk about her own experience of MJ -- the fact that she had auditioned for his last volley of shows in London, that the energy in the audition room was palpable and unlike anything she had seen before, that the people dancing there were giving everything they had, sweating through their shoes, even though Michael wasn't even in the room until the final round, when he was merely a soft presence in the back row of an auditorium. She said she was telling us about that experience because it didn't solely belong to her, but it belonged to all of us, to everyone, and that we should share it too, because it carries on. And so it does.

Wedding dance

You know what was wonderful about Ashesh and Mona's wedding, besides the marriage of two of our favorite people at a beautiful place on a lovely early summer day? The fact that L and I basically burned through the dance floor with our awesomeness.

Many of the guests at this party were Ashesh and Mona's relatives from South Asia, so the music was a carefully calibrated mix of American hip and hop and pop alongside all sorts of south Asian dance tunes. Obviously L and I were out of our seats for the American music, but as the bhangra tracks blared, and all the Indian relatives were storming the dance floor in their suits and saris, we hung around and tried to follow their lead: bouncing our shoulders, dipping our arms, keeping our hands high as we changed the light bulb or shimmied our hips. There was a fine line to walk between respectful imitation and boorish mimicry, but we did all right. Ashesh's sister told us that she had been afraid that the white people would clear the floor when the DJ called out, "Desis, this one's for you!" but she was glad to see us still dancing, and that we were putting her relatives to shame.

As the evening progressed, the DJ returned to American tunes, and he hit upon a gold mine: a sizzling mix of current hip hop and dance tracks. After an imploring look from Ashesh we returned to the dance floor alongside everyone else. Eventually, though, the other guests seemed to have filtered away, and L and I realized: we were the only ones dancing.

Did that stop us? Of course not. The DJ kept earning his money as the songs got better and better -- we were dancing by ourselves, making the most of the space, dipping and spinning and twisting and popping and shuffling and even grinding (they can't get mad at us, we're white and married, is what I thought when I briefly worried about what some of the older, more traditional guests might think). I realized that people were watching us, and even cheering and oohing as we moved around the floor. My eyes were locked with L's. We were hot, sweating. The wedding photographer was all over us, swooping around and squatting and putting himself in our midst like we were Lindsay Lohan. My fear now is that Ashesh and Mona are going to see eight hundred photos of us dancing like fools and mouthing the words to songs, and unfortunately that will be part of the official record of this wedding.

At the end of the night, as the wedding guests had dwindled to about 20 of us, the DJ gave us a special shout-out from his perch and people clapped for us. The photographer complimented us and said we had been very entertaining and a pleasure to shoot. Someone else told us we seemed so happy and carefree out there, and that it looked like L and I had a great relationship, and that we must practice all the time. I thought: actually, we do.

Ditch that

It might have been the best moment of the entire week. Since mid-December I have been rocking to an album called "Love/Hate" by The-Dream, the force behind last year's mega-hits "Umbrella" and "Bed." Despite his irritating moniker and completely unnecessary hyphen, he has come up with the best R&B album I've heard in a really long time. I bought this album almost on a lark and have been completely taken with it. Of the twelve tracks, I love ... eleven of them. The whole album is incredibly unified and coherent -- not to say that the songs all sound the same, but they share many common vocal elements, giving Mr. Dream the chance to play with these pieces in exciting and unexpected ways. The music is fast and hot and sexy and catchy -- it's not morose, it's at a party and having a good time.

So I have been listening to this cd constantly for over a month now, my attention wandering from track to track, trying to pay attention to how the songs leak into each other and why exactly this thing is so strong and nearly perfect. On Thursday night I went to hip hop, not sure what song Russell had picked for the next few weeks, and then he starts playing the track -- Oh no he did not, is what I think, as track number nine, "Ditch That," starts thumping through the speakers. I spend the rest of the class elated, rocking my game face and mouthing the words, but also trying to tone it down so I don't look like a nerd, and then ultimately not caring and letting myself get swept away in the music.

It was that first moment that did it -- recognizing the track immediately and knowing how the rest of the time would be, drowning yourself in this song you already love for the better part of an hour. It was like walking into your own surprise party. It was as good as it can be.

I love humanity

Hip hop tonight was incredible. There were only about ten of us, so the class was small and cohesive, and we were doing this ridiculous combo that had me working the dance face and strutting like a fool the entire time. The song, "Money in the Bank," by Swizz Beatz, was new to me and awesome. Here is the combo, so you can do it at home:

Dip it, dip it, dip it, dip it, front dip, ahh, turn, shoulder POP! Foot, foot, NO, and back; easy, easy, break it down and up, JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!, Out and back, leg and front, pop it like it's hot, go back and turn, shoulder, arm, down and back! Roll it, work, roll it, work, split and down, go BUTT! BUTT! BUTT! BUTT! Split and back, KICK and DOWN, JUMP and step, Money in the bank.

As you can see, it's awesome. (Incidentally, it took me about five minutes to compose the preceding paragraph, because it is both accurate and rhythmic, so appreciate that.) On the way out I had a nice chat with the teacher, Russell, who is very cool and is the Obi Wan to my Luke Skywalker, hip hop-wise (The B.I.G. to my Puffy? No, definitely not).

Afterwards I picked up Richard Ford's "A Multitude of Sins" at the bookstore, and then went to Chipotle. I chatted with a couple of the friendly guys behind the counter, who know me as Veggie Burrito, No Fajitas, and one noticed that I was limping slightly, and I explained how I'm a little beat down because I'm training for the marathon. Moments later, the girl ahead of me in line asked for extra guac for her burrito, but when she heard it was a buck-fifty extra, she declined. I thought to myself, this girl held the door open for you as you came in. Be nice. So I ordered a side of guac for my veggie burrito (it was free for me) and I gave it to the girl. She was very appreciative yet she skedaddled out of there very quickly, despite my efforts to flash the wedding ring and make it clear that I wasn't trying to make a move on her, I was just trying to help her out with her guacamole needs. But as she left, thanking me profusely, she said, "and good luck on the marathon," and I felt fantastic.

So then I meandered home, with a bluebird on my shoulder and a spring in my step.

Things I wanted to write about...

...but the moment has passed:

1. The 10K I did on Sunday, where two guys almost got in a fight, mid-run, and the antagonist, who was a real jerk, was actually slower than the guy he was picking on, which was hilarious. Also the fact that my calves were sore for days afterward because I haven't run downhill in months, which is sad (yet in my defense, the treadmills at the gym don't have a downward setting).

2. Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," where I basically underlined the entire book and have spent weeks mulling over the last line of her preface: "writers are always selling somebody out."

3. R. Kelly's song "I'm a Flirt," which is like the perfect complement to Diddy's "Last Night," and I love both of them. I think if I had to identify the top songs of 2007 so far, they would be Omarion's "Ice Box" and "Last Night."

4. The fact that I have hit some sort of extracurricular wall at law school, and I am just sick and tired of planning events and running things and ordering food and being excited about everything. I spent huge chunks of time in high school, college, grad school, and work doing all of that, and dammit, I'm 27 years old and I've had enough.

5. We had a really nice spring evening last Tuesday: I darted home to run outside after school, and then we went to two different tapas places in the neighborhood, sitting outside and enjoying sangria. And a waitress complimented my Spanish accent. I wore shorts the whole day and it felt as if the entire city had let out a sigh of relief - there was a palpable sense of happiness and activity and community as we watched the city stroll by.

6. The other day at law school I got totally busted dancing in the hallway, listening to my ipod. As the person passed by, looking at me weirdly, I had to pretend my dance face was my standard countenance and sort of jerkily transition into a normal walking motion. It was not seamless, I'll tell you that.

7. Speaking of which, at hip hop last week, we were rocking out and then, in the middle of everything, at that moment where the music (a hot remix of "Ice Box," see above) fuses with the motion to create this perfect expression of humanity and joy, the teacher bellowed, "WORK, Mike!' in this way that was like a compliment and a command and a life lesson and a request all at the same time. I have been reliving this moment frequently.

New Jersey wedding

I want to write something tonight, but I don't know what. We went to a wedding on Friday night in New Jersey. It was L's friend from her old job, and we only knew one other person besides the bride and groom. Consequently we were seated at the bride's riff raff table. The cocktail reception was so opulent that they had a caviar station with a series of flavored vodkas. I didn't even know how to approach this. When I tried the caviar I could feel each egg burst in my mouth in a little briny explosion. I looked at the vodkas longingly but didn't know how to drink them.

When we started dancing the photographer was all over L and I. I would dip her or spin her or dance behind her and the flashbulbs of the photographer would catch all of our motions like a strobe light. While I feel there is some potential for a completely awesome photo of the two of us, I think the bride and groom will look at that photoset and wonder who the hell we were. I was flattered that we were dancing well enough, or awkwardly enough, or memorably enough, to merit a lot of the photographer's time. God knows the real party was at the caviar table.

Since we didn't know anyone and had booked a hotel room for the night, we drank copious amounts. I made friends with the bartender who kept refilling L's champagne, and I joked with her about the music selections and how often I was coming back to the bar. I drank glass after glass of white wine. The bartender would ask if I wanted chardonnay or pinot grigio, and I would tell her to surprise me, or that at this point it didn't even matter. Our tablemates were friendly, although the nice guy who introduced himself to us turned out to be engaged to the brittle girl who was at first unfriendly and later unpleasant. Good luck with that one.

We danced to everything: to Beyonce and Frank Sinatra and everything in between. When there were eight people dancing to "YMCA," L and I and our other friend were three of them. Even though they didn't play the Electric Slide, we did it anyway. Twice. When they played "Sexyback," at times I was Justin and at other times I was Timbaland. I worried that my subtle shoulder dips, nimble footwork, and carefully calibrated dance face were lost on the other guests. After dinner and dancing, this opulent wedding presented an open bar of dessert wines and liquers. L gagged down a few sips of port, and I tossed back Sambuca, complete with coffee beans. Except for the next morning, when my head thought it was still at the wedding and my body thought it was at the bottom of a cement mixer, I had a great time. I felt suave, confident, and good-looking. It was the most fun I've had in a suit since law school took the concept of professionalism and beat me over the head with it.

So, it was a more enjoyable wedding than I ever could have expected. And it just goes to prove the validity of my number one matrimonial rule: if you don't have fun at a wedding, honestly it's your own fault. Because all of the elements are there.

27 is the new 26

My weekend was intense and wonderful: an epic night at Benny's, a four-mile race to kick off the 2007 running year, a trip to the airport to see James, a birthday party, church, a classic Manhattan afternoon, a great gym class, and Oscar-night food coma. I want to write about all of this stuff, but it's too overwhelming, so I'm going to go all Orientalist on you and break it down haiku-style:

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Juan's a good waiter:
'Ritas, black flowers, and shots
The men's room is home

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Seven degrees, wind
7:28 per mile
He outruns the cold.

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Wait at Arrivals...
Walk away happy and sad
Five months in one hour

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Eight-count to the beat
It's my song! It's my birthday!!
Don't spill on my rug.

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Twenty-seventh year:
Good wife, good life, good city,
church points out to me.

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Usually in the back,
At the gym I play it cool--
now your boy's up front.

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Friends, Oscars, excess
Life resumes so pleasantly
And they even sang.