Three years

You know what always makes me think of my wife? That line from Beyonce's song "Upgrade U" where she says, "It's very seldom that you're blessed to find your equal." Indeed. But I definitely lucked out with L.

Happy anniversary, love.

Inside the fortress of solitude

I haven't said very much this weekend. L went down to Florida to see her grandma, so I've been on my own since yesterday afternoon. I have taken this time to briefly withdraw -- from the world, into myself. I feel like I needed time to regroup. Today I only left the house to go to the farmers market, and then again to eat lunch and read "The Power Broker," and finally I went on a walk around the block a couple of hours ago. I have spent a lot of time reading and watching television. I watched "Sophie's Choice" and "The Contender." I thought a lot about writing, which I've put on the backburner after a couple of daunting weeks at work. I've been listening to a lot of music, too, and when John Mayer's song "Home Life" came on, I felt that strange feeling of nostalgia that music can provoke. It is almost palpable, like drunkenness, like feeling something rolling over your shoulders and consuming you. Hearing that song made me think of how much my life has changed in three years, made me think about how I live and what I have now. It was one of those nights where I was just shuffling through all the music on my ipod, rediscovering old stuff and cobbling together a strange and rich medley of stuff, enough to put me in a reflective mood.

Throughout the day I wondered if I should call somebody up or try to meet anyone for a meal or a drink, but I decided not to. Not to mention that the list of potential invitees now seems pathetically small. It was a beautiful day and I felt bad for not running or spending more time outside, but it was enough to run my errands and feel the breeze coming inside, through the plants and the herb garden perched on the fire escape. I didn't even shower today. But that was my choice, and I figure tomorrow when L comes back I can get all spruced up and be sociable. Today it felt good to dig in.

Also, last night I went to an intermediate hip hop class and really got my ass handed to me. It was pretty tough, intricate stuff and I realized I was out of my league about twenty minutes in. There were only a handful of us in there. Two of the other people had clothing with dance studios' names on them, which was a bad sign. Somebody else was some high school prodigy who had learned choreography from our teacher's DVDs. And there I was in my running t-shirt and sneaks, knowing this may have been a mistake. The teacher, who is a pretty accomplished dude, taught really quickly and didn't break things into eight counts. Instead everything tracked the lyrics of the song, so it was tough to place it within the music. Once I realized that he was really hitting the bass notes, things made more sense. By the end of the class I was about 70% there, I would say. It was fun but also very trying. He was calling me out at times during the class, telling me to not think too much and get stuck in my head. There were moments when I would feel those first hot pangs of stress and panic and embarrassment, and I tried to push it as far away as I could. Beneath the immediate knowledge that you alone are very conspicuously not doing something correctly is a deeper and more gnawing realization that you are not as good as you think you are, Mr. Hot Stuff. It was not fun in those moments. And frankly, if I want to feel bad about myself and get yelled at, I just show up at work. No need to extend that into my...hip hop life, as it were.

Maybe that class is what set me on this course for the last twenty-four hours. Quietness, minimal talking, books and the tv, a few strangled verses of old nostalgic songs. Yet for one day it's enough.

Telling my parents

My parents were in town this past weekend, and we got to tell them the great news. After two really long, stressful weeks at work, I was so excited to see them and tell them. The idea of that moment kept pulling me through.

My parents and L were waiting for me at their hotel on Washington Square. We spent a few minutes visiting and checking out the room, and then we started meandering through the park on our way to dinner. We were going over to Stand for some burgers. It was turning into a very nice evening -- the heat had broken, the sky was a watery bluish pink, and people were strolling all around. We pointed out some of the renovations made to Washington Square lately, the wide boulevards and colorful flower beds and wrought iron fences and lightposts. We were just talking about work stuff, nothing major, just visiting with each other. We were over by the south side of the fountain, watching the jets shooting up, standing in a little circle. I had made eye contact with L and she gave me the go-ahead.

"Guess what?" I said. My parents looked at me expectantly. I looked at my mom and then at my dad as I said, "Lillian's pregnant!"

There was a real moment of silence then, as what I was saying settled in with them. Then it was all hugs and good cheer. L said later that she saw my dad tear up as soon as I said it, but there was a real moment of astonishment there. They were so excited. "Oh, this is so special!" Dad said. "How could you not tell me?!" Mom said. It was such an exciting thing. Mom said later she thought that maybe we were getting a dog. She started crying a little bit out of happiness, and told us how much we would love our child. She said Kelsey's and my cheeks used to turn red because she would just kiss us so much. "You will not believe how much you love that child, you will kill for your child, you will kill for your child," Mom said in a way that was funny and only a little weird.

I'm smiling even now as I write this. Dad said we must have planned this, to tell them this news in such a perfect setting -- in the middle of Washington Square under a clear pink sky on a great July evening -- but we really didn't. Telling them cast the rest of the weekend in this great glow of love and excitement. My parents said they would be talking about this for a long time that night. Mom insisted on calling her friend Jill to share the news immediately ("I'm going to be a grandmother!"). It was so wonderful to feel such love and support from them. I had this strange fear that they wouldn't be excited -- that they would think it was too soon, or that we were too young or not established enough or too indebted or something -- and even though I knew those fears weren't rational, it was nice to have them dashed anyway.

Telling my parents was different from telling friends. Like marriage, having a baby is a significant event in the life of an entire family, not just the immediate participants. It was nice to add another circle of love around the little one.

Collect $200

Every week we are getting emails from Babycenter.com that talk about the baby's development, its size, and other issues that will pop up. Every week there is some tidbit about how wives can get their stupid, lazy husbands involved. These are tips for women married to comically inept men, and the suggestions are all hilariously inane in their own right. "Invite your husband to come to the doctor's appoint with you." "See if your husband would like to think of some questions that he'd like to ask." Who are these people? The other fun thing is this "Quote of the Week" feature, which highlights some twitterish lines from some random pregnant woman somewhere on the internet. They tend to be depressing. "What's happening to me? I feel sick all the time. It's like my scalp is on fire" -- Jenny, from Buttock, Iowa.

The really exciting thing, though, is that by the time you figure out you're pregnant, it's already week 4. (True, pregnancy is something like an 80-week process, but it's nice to not start all the way at square one.) It feels really good to dive in with a few weeks under your belt, like in Monopoly when you collect $200 just for passing Go. We're really moving now.

Currently, at the six week mark, Little Blabe is about a quarter of an inch in size. This is a real measurable quantity! No longer comparing the baby to seeds! L.B. also has dark spots on its head that will turn into eyes, which seems weird, and its heart is beating furiously quick - something like 100-160 beats per minute. Our little lentil bean.

Day one/Dandelion

I came home tonight after another long, rainy day at work. I was chatting with L as I stripped out of my dress pants and shirt, putting on shorts and a t-shirt. I was telling her about my day at work, a day of minor victories and defeats, long waiting hours. I asked her about her day, if she was feeling better from the fever and headache that kept her home. She was feeling better, and in bright spirits, except for a dull headache. The apartment was clean and she looked sweet and pretty, wearing a light blue t-shirt and a summer skirt. L said, "I'm pregnant!"

I started laughing. I was happy but also just amused by the whole thing. We've been trying for a mere three weeks, and you're pregnant already? And, after telling me that a wife's announcement to her husband is like her own version of a proposal, and thus can be done with any degree of creativity and romance, this is how you tell me? These two thoughts were running in parallel through my head. Just this afternoon I was worrying about if it would take a long time, if it would be stressful if it would even be possible. And now this?

I felt so, so happy. Just a big grin on my face. I felt a new wave of energy and we talked about how incredulous we felt. She had already taken two pregnancy tests, as well as made a call to the doctor and done a bunch of research online. It looks like we're in week 4 of the pregnancy. The baby is but a mere bundle of cells. I am happy that we are aware of the kid now; that while it's still forming and developing, something out of nothing, there are already people in the world who love it. We love you.

I still can't believe this is happening. We read about how 20-30% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and I hope our little babe makes it through. I spent a lot of time tonight kissing on my wife's belly, telling our new kid that I loved him or her. L will be such a beautiful mother. She is already. Of course I told her, half-facetiously, how they say you're not really a father until you see the baby -- but I am enraptured nonetheless.

I wandered to Chipotle to pick up some dinner in a happy cloud. I listened to Musiq's "So Beautiful," which seemed appropriate. We ate dinner, watched television. I called James to tell him this unbelievable, wonderful news. It was so good to tell him. He was impressed, as was I, with my ability to get this job done quickly. We had a good laugh over that -- I told him how I figured I should be able to do it, since even my limited knowledge of my genetic background tells me that indeed, those kids were able to do the trick. I feel proud of myself in a dumb, masculine way, but still proud. I am so happy L and I were able to interlock ourselves in this way.

Tonight I keep thinking of the blossom on a dandelion. Our little guy (or girl) is but a mere puff of cells right now, something small and beautiful and perfect and loved. So delicate, yet strong, the miracle of life itself. Please don't scatter, dandelion -- remain and grow and come to us. We are in love with you already.

Such awe and gratitude tonight. And laughter -- incredulous, genuine laughter.

State Update: Bethlehem, PA

L and I have spent the last two Saturday mornings taking a bus from Port Authority to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in order to go visit James. Bethlehem is the kind of snug little town where one might move in order to participate in the Witness Protection Program; James is there, however, for grad school classes at Lehigh, so the only logical thing to do was head over to Bethlehem to check it out.

It seems like the history of that town is symbolized by the great steel mills hunched over the river. They used to be the engine of the town's economy and culture, yet they now rest empty and disintegrating. Walking through the south side of town last week, we were struck by the vacant parking lots and the eerily quiet sidewalks; it seemed like the town had been built for people who were no longer there. All of the mills shared the same rusty color, the same uniform degree of decay. A few broken windows, a few tall weeds.

But if that's the past of this once-proud city, what, pray tell, it its future? The Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, baby! That bus we took from Port Authority brought us to the door of the casino. To reward us for riding the bus, casino personnel clambered aboard as soon as we pulled up and distributed plastic cards pre-loaded with $30 for use at the machines, a little gift card to encourage your gambling and ever so gently nudge you towards the slots. The casino itself appears to have been built in the husk of an old steel facility. The great central room is bright and vibrant and orange; there is an audible hum coming from the scores of computerized slot machines speckled across the floor, a single golden high note ringing constantly. It sounds like angels, it sounds like money, it sounds like action. To me this strange constant note was the most memorable part of all of it.

If only the patrons of this golden orange palace could match their surroundings. Most people we saw were at least two of the following: old, overweight, pushing walkers, and/or smoking constantly. It was somewhat grim.


When we arrived today we fled the casino immediately to experience the Blueberry Festival in town. This was delightful. We went to a petting zoo, but didn't touch any animals (including goats, sheep, pigs, and a calf, and a number of mangy birds). We ate barbecue. We walked through grassy lawns looking at crafts booths, like hand-woven baskets and homemade baby clothes and ipod cozies. We ate blueberry funnel cake. We saw a horse-powered carousel. We watched a pie-eating contest. We went on a tour of the plantation where the festival was held, and learned all about the Moravians, who, to my disappointment, were not an alien race who colonized parts of Pennsylvania and then interbred with the locals, but rather a group of Protestants who seem perfectly nice and reasonable.


We returned to the casino for a few rounds of gambling with our free $30, as well as dinner at Emeril's Chop House, the fancy Emeril Lagasse restaurant that is his only establishment in the entire northeast. We had a lovely time, although the restaurant seemed surprisingly sophisticated for being nestled in the desperate, smoky heart of a casino. We felt awkward in casual clothes and flip flops, and I was clenching my feet as we walked to minimize that thwacking sound, and holding my head high with the knowledge that I was indeed wearing my finest cargo shorts.

On the way back tonight I just listened to music and watched the darkened countryside slowly assemble itself into the city skyline. It was good to leave the city, even better to spend a few hours with James. Not bad for a Saturday.


P.S. This last picture was from last Saturday, thus the different clothes and the longer hair on me. Do you know how much that beautiful pitcher of beer cost? Maybe four bucks. I'm telling you, it's a great town.

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.

Witness

Last night I woke with a start, opening my eyes to a pitch-dark bedroom. Outside there was a strange murmur of voices, and I knew something was wrong. It was too late for people to be outside. I lay in bed and turned towards the windows in the far room, listening to the litany of voices churning outside. It didn't make sense.

Then a woman screaming: "GET THE FUCK OFF ME! AAIIEEEEE! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING! HELP ME!"

I cowered in bed for a second, ashamed and afraid. My heart was pounding.

"GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME! AAAIIEEEEEEE!"

I thought about calling 911. I thought about Kitty Genovese. I thought about the previous time I called 911, when my phone locked itself in 'emergency phone' and the police called me back a few minutes later with questions I struggled to answer. The woman screamed again. I leapt out of bed and ran to the window, grabbing my glasses and my cellphone. Angled against the glass, I could see several police cars parked askew in front of our building. Their lights and sirens were off, making the cars look oddly demure. The police were standing around, and the person screaming was strapped to a gurney that they were loading into an ambulance. Her cries softened, and then stopped.

L was awake at this point too. Across the street I could see a few more lit windows separating themselves from the uniform darkness of night. I came back to bed, noticing that it was 4:30 in the morning.

I lay in bed for a while, waiting for my heart to slow down. James and I used to talk about the worst things about living in the city, and for me it was always this: there is no insulation, no protection from ugliness of so many kinds. Since I've lived here I've heard screams of abject fear. I've called 911 to help someone who was being attacked. I've seen people doing drugs on the street in front of me. I've seen people whose lives seem so irrevocably broken.

Last night was one of those nights when the city seems like a place of chaos and fear. There is no luxury of ignorance here. Eventually I fell back asleep, and woke up again to another new morning, no police cars in sight. How this place can turn on you.

Writing class

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to take a writing course this summer. I feel like there's a lot of stuff inside me that I want to get out, but I don't feel like I have the tools or structure or discipline to do that. And I thought summer would be a good time to challenge myself and try to think in a creative and different way about things. Since I have been so into short stories lately, I signed up for a 9-week online short story class.

Of course, since work has been pretty exhausting this week, I am now struggling to turn in my assignment by the Saturday noon deadline. But I've been hammering out something and I think it might be ok. As I was writing it I was trying to be clever and symbolic and theme-y, and I fear that when I start going down that road the strings and seams are very evident, but that's why I'm in the class. Sometimes I feel so stunted and immature as a writer, which feels wrong since I read so much and feel like I should be better, just through osmosis.

I do love writing late at night, though. You want to know my ritual? After L goes to bed I sit at the desk and put on my headphones and listen to Adele's "Hometown Glory" a couple times. That song opens me up, man. It's so beautiful and reflective and mournful. It gets my juices flowing and helps me find the words. Then I skip around my itunes list, playing whatever slow, night music strikes me. The crazy thing is the visceral reaction some of these songs produce. Sometimes it will be Frou Frou or Coldplay or Jill Scott or David Gray or Erykah Badu -- and it takes me back, and it's just this rush of sense memory and it feels like I am 20 or 24 or 26 again, sitting in a different room with a different set of circumstances. Sometimes the only common thread is the love of a song. Sometimes it's a lot more. Either way, it gets me going and makes me discover a place where the words introduce themselves.

I am really excited about this writing class. I want to do it well. I think I have a gift that I've ignored for a while, and if there's one thing working full-time as a lawyer has taught me, it's that I have to hold on to every damn scrap and piece of myself that I can. Preservation of self, preservation of sanity.

Wish me luck.

Kris Allen's cover of "Heartless"

We didn't watched "American Idol" this year, but I heard about this clip and I think it's great. Unlike most acoustic versions of R&B or hip hop songs, this one isn't smirking about white appropriation of black vernacular; this is just a really solid version that actually brings out the musicality of the song and gives it an emotional heft, that Kanye, as a not-great singer, simply can't. Kris Allen's version of "Heartless" makes me love the original in a new way. Congrats to him on his big win, I guess. This is the beauty of pop music, right here.

Terminator Salvation: Not a good movie

Last night L and I watched "Terminator Salvation." It was really stupid. I wasn't expecting a work of art, but I was hoping for an effective, zippy action movie to while away the night. Unfortunately the movie was pretty tedious and cumbersome. Christian Bale was working his best Batman growl, and Common was unintentionally hilarious as The Black Sidekick, but the movie was incomprehensible. I don't know enough of the Terminator mythology to really get into it, but every time someone asked somebody else what their name was, the person would say, "Kyle REESE," or "Marcus WRIGHT," in this fantastically overwrought way, and then wait eight seconds for the audience to stop gasping before they resumed their conversation. When people say, "What's your name?" no one answers like that; they say "Kyle," or "Marcus," and then try to give you their business card.

Some of the action pieces were entertaining, and the movie had a bleached-out color palette and dystopian vibe that I enjoyed. The time travel elements were silly, and the ending made no sense. So they destroy Skynet's central headquarters (oops, spoiler alert) but the war isn't over? Then why did we just bother with this whole thing? Also, the Marcus Wright character, who was sort of a terminator but didn't know it, was way cooler than boring, sanctimonious John Connor, who couldn't go five minutes in this movie without wrecking a helicopter.

Finally, if you were a brilliant self-aware network of machines, and you wanted to design a terminating robot to destroy humans, why would you design your own human-like robot? Why not just put a gun on top of a wheel, or something? To see these slow terminators lumbering towards their targets -- and then when they reach them, instead of doing something smart, like crushing their heads or shooting them, they pick up the human and throw them into a cabinet or something -- and then continue lumbering towards where they threw the human, so they can throw them at a car and hope maybe that that throw turns out to be the death stroke -- really? Really, Skynet?

It's a dumb movie. Unlike Skynet, it's not self-aware and is crushed by the weight of its own stupid backstory. On the plus side, we got to sit near the handicapped section of the theatre, so we had plenty of legroom, and our popcorn was delicious.

Flag day

The other day we had an interesting talk with John and Anna -- who seem to have acquired a lot of wisdom lately, like some collateral grace of new parenthood -- and they remarked that in order to live happily in this city, you have to really love other people. Not just the people who are easy to love, like your friends and relatives, but other, crazier people: unruly youths, drunken professionals, midnight dogwalkers who blather on about Mets tickets while their dog barks wildly, just outside your window.

I thought about this observation yesterday, when I spent the whole day battling crowds to find my own little piece of quiet. I got up early to do a 10K in Central Park. As soon as the race began, the rain did too. Small, occasional droplets gave way to a pelting, determined rain, drenching everyone and making my shirt slap against my skin. All the water in my shoes bogged down in my toes, adding a degree of suction to each step. I thought about just pulling off or seeking refuge at a friend's near the Park -- I mean, why bother. Ultimately the rain stopped after three miles, but the misery endured. I finished the race somewhat respectably, although I felt like I was passed by successive waves of people as I kept on my dogged old pace. It felt like a new cloud of people would overcome me every few minutes, and I would be dodging people coming up on either side -- was I really going that slowly? After the race people milled around, wet and relieved. As I walked back to the train I watched other people approach the finish line -- older people, heavier people who were trying so hard and doing so well. I felt proud of them. Three spectactors eruped in joyous screams as their friend ran past and I couldn't help but smile. So encouraging.

All I really wanted was to go home and take a nap and read my awesome new book, Nixonland, a big fat history of the 1960s. I felt so exhausted and wet and beaten. But Saturday was the day of our annual neighborhood fair: streets lined with tents and kiosks selling all kinds of jewelry, art, artisanal soaps, and ironic t-shirts, all of it seemingly designed for cynical college girls; hundreds of people milling about directly in front of our building, sitting at folding tables and dancing to the succession of bands on the main stage, blasting music towards our home; a magnificent 30-foot American flag fluttering between the buildings; a fat trailer of Bud parked by our front door. They had some jazz sets, a few warbly olden-time lady singers, and some funk bands, all of them relentlessly hammering their music through our windows. I tried to read and couldn't concentrate. I tried to nap but couldn't fall asleep through their public announcements about throwing away garbage and locating temporarily missing children. We watched TV at top volume but it was useless. The constant hum of the crowd was not a problem, but the music was just so damn aggravating. At L's suggestion, we took a walk and made our way to Abingdon Square. "I just wanted to take a nap and read my book," I kept repeating. I was so tired from the run and general sleep deprivation. "I am being literally tortured," I said, even though this was not true.

That night we escaped the bands and the crowds and the beer smell around our house to go celebrate Ashesh's birthday. On our way back we encountered one of our wacky neighbors as the festival wound down; the stage was already gone, the people had dispersed and only a few empty cups lined our front steps. "Were you here for the dancing in the streets?" she asked us. She seemed happy and drunk. We explained that we had been at a birthday dinner and had unfortunately missed it. "Well, where else can you dance in the streets?" she said lightly. "Nowhere but here, not with all these bloody-hell regulations...We can only do it because we were grandfathered it. Now did you see the firemen putting up the flag today? It took them two hours! I don't know how they did it. We used to leave the flag up 'til Flag Day, or at least the Fourth of July, but this one is so big it has to go down tomorrow. It's a real shame."

We commiserated over the flag, which waved lightly over the street from a rope strung between buildings. It was so bold and brash; even in the dark the bright swathes of color were beautiful. Over the emptying street it felt like community, like country. After a few minutes we headed inside and finally fell into a long-awaited deep and grateful sleep.

And sure enough, by mid-day today the flag was gone.

Tenacious

I haven't written in a while, and that's because things have been generally awful. But after two weeks of misery, work has been a lot better in the last couple of days. Before I would feel a pit in my stomach as I approached the building, and would spend the entire day braced for something bad to happen. I lost a lot of confidence in my own ability and intelligence, and I still don't feel like I trust myself to be sharp. As it happened I got yelled at/reprimanded/embarrassed every Thursday, and I'm hoping tomorrow can break the pattern.

Lately I've put a lot of time in at work, in an effort to prove my stamina and dedication. Some of it was misguided, some of it was wrong. But nobody questioned my commitment. Now I have a new feeling about work, and the new buzzword is: tenacious. I feel like I'm holding on to some bucking bronco, I am getting jerked around and beat up and bruised, I am landing in the dirt and getting mud splashed in my eyes, there might be people laughing and jeering at me, but I don't know if I can hear them -- all I know is that I'm not letting go of that damn bull.

Last night in bed I felt it again, the same sense of nervousness and anxiety seize my body as I lay in a dark room, waiting for sleep. I thought about tasks that had to be done and mistakes I feared I had made. I felt imprisoned.

There are some really good things going on, too, but I haven't had the stomach to write about them: our friends' beautiful new baby, the Tobias Wolff stories I'm still reading, the great sandwich place on 12th we just tried. All of these things waiting if and when I can break the surface and come up for air.

My role model

This was a singularly, spectacularly, bogglingly shitty week at work. I didn't think I would make it, and yet somehow here we are again on Sunday night, standing at the precipice, at the brink of another week.

I had an epiphany a couple days ago about how I need to approach everything, and I feel dumb that it took me this long. When I first started, one of my colleagues told me that I remind her of Kenneth the page from "30 Rock." She said it was about my willful good cheer in times of strife. Kenneth the page needs to be my role model at work. He is competent, relentlessly cheerful, and blithely unaware of the slights and insults and stresses that thunder down on him on a weekly basis. He just keeps chugging forward with his permanent grin, homespun wisdom, and maddening courtesy. I need to be more like this. Do your job, keep smiling, don't break a sweat, and let everything else just slide on past you.

The other little thing that's helped me figure some things out is a Coldplay song. Just because I'm losing, doesn't mean I'm lost.

Cold Spring

We had a monumental weekend. We spent Saturday in Cold Spring, New York, just an hour or so up the Metro North, riding rails that hugged the Hudson shoreline as the mountains emerged around us. The town itself was pretty and quaint. We walked from the train station a few blocks along Main Street, past an outfitters', a few cafes, an ice cream place, a couple of restaurants, and a B&B or two. People come to Cold Spring to hike Hudson Highlands State Park or kayak along the river; people also seem to bring their kids here. I particularly noticed how many families were toting babies of a different ethnicity, like we had stumbled into "Take Your Internationally-Adopted Kid to Cold Spring" Weekend without realizing it.

After getting situated at our place, the Pig Hill Inn, with its creaky, wide floorboards and charming European hostess, we set out for a sturdy two-hour hike in the Park. We had to walk along Fair Street to reach the trailhead, past a stately Catholic Church with American and Vatican flags fluttering and a Little League game enjoyed by a handful of relaxed parents sitting in folding chairs in the shade. We did a nice two-hour loop along several well-marked trails: Washburn (white blaze) to Undercliff (yellow) to Brook (red) to Cornish (blue), beginning with a steep ascent past an old quarry and gradually circling back down, almost to river level, past the ruins of the Cornish estate gaping at us through the trees and grass.
The views, once we reached them, were incredible. This is a different New York, this is Washington Irving country; a country where apples are grown and headless horsemen ride and where something strangely exotic yet elemental, something Dutch, still thrives. From the rocky heights we could take in an expansive view of the broadly sweeping river and the town laid out below. We could see the baseball field far down. The curves of the river looked swollen and rich, a fertile crescent. We could see the buildings of West Point and the foamy trails of boats as they chugged upriver. We were in New York, and we were in something greater.

That night we had dinner at a B&B by the river, sitting on the porch eating filet mignon as bored local kids rode bikes by the water. Back in the room, L fell asleep at 9:30 in her cute dinner dress and I sat in the chair, reading Tobias Wolff stories and the current Atlantic. In the morning, after breakfast, we got back on the train and chugged back home to the city, leaving behind the mountains and the clear watery air to dive back underground, where what you see beyond the windows of your train is not a mountainside dressed in old lively trees, but an inky blackness that reminds you of nothing so much as an absence of anything. Yet somehow it felt like enough.

Bizarro L

Tonight around 6:30 I changed into my running clothes in my office, and then set out for the park, nine blocks north, for a nice 6 mile run to kick off the weekend. As I was leaving I noticed a girl walking up from Rock Center towards the Park too, dressed in workout clothes. Huh, I thought. We sort of walked near each other through the wandering hordes on 6th Avenue, past the restaurants and bars with tables spilling out onto the sidewalk, past the commuters and past the glassed-in cigar store with large men smoking imperiously. At the park I took a minute to stretch while this girl took off running.

It was a perfect day to be there. The trees are just starting to lose their flowers for fresh new bursts of leaves. The sun was setting slowly, casting a warm light on the stocky skyline of the east side and sending long shafts of light along the grass and the road. Everyone was running or walking, riding in carriages or lounging under a tree. About a mile in I realized I was approaching the girl from before, and I passed her and kept moving. I continued along the great hill at the north end of the park, dipping briefly below the sunlight to climb back up the rocky hillside. Later, as I was nearing the last half mile, I saw this same girl trucking along -- she must have done a shorter route and gotten ahead of me, while I took the long route along the great hill -- and sure enough I passed her for the second time, just a few yards from the 6-mile mark where I was finishing.

I took a few minutes to stretch my legs again, my shirt cold against my back as the temperature began dipping. The girl passed me again, leaving the park, as I stretched. A few minutes later, walking back down 6th to the office to gather my things, I realized this same girl was walking a mere few feet away. Kind of strange. After a few minutes she took her earphones out and said to me, "Apparently we have the same pace, we should be running buddies."

Now, this is the point in the story where L's expression turned from benign amusement to skepticism. And I can see how this could have ended dramatically badly. But rest assured it did not. I ended up chatting with this girl as we walked back to Rock Center -- she works there too, and she ran the marathon the same year I did. And here's the kicker: she looked a lot like L, but frankly, a lot less attractive. She was short, and had dark hair, and sort of the same features, except things were slightly off and the overall effect not as appealing. She looked like a police sketch version of my wife. It was funny, though, because she had been training to run the same half marathon as L, and there seemed to be a few other weird similarities. Who was this girl?

So, on my run tonight I got to casually interact with a strange, less-attractive version of my wife. It was kind of fun and kind of weird, like trying Vietnamese food for the first time. After reassuring L that there was nothing sketchy or weird about it (besides the fact that it happened in the first place) she was fine with it too, and ended up making fun of me, which is how our conversations usually wind up.

With that auspicious beginning, tomorrow we're heading up to Cold Spring for a night away from the city. And then Sunday: L's birthday.

Day at Citifield

Yesterday Ashesh, Mona, L and I braved the 7 train to check out the Mets/Brewers game at the brand-new Citifield. Everything -- the ballpark, the weather, the seats, the outcome, the Blue Smoke ribs, the time we appeared on the Jumbotron, the margaritas we enjoyed back in the neighborhood afterwards -- was spectacular. It was a great day to be a New Yorker.

Although Citifield is definitely cut from the same Venerable-Old-Timey-Ivy-and-Brickwork aesthetic now dominating most new baseball stadiums, I thought they actually showed some restraint in not laying it on too thick. For all of the masonry and elegantly arches welcoming you to the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, there's plenty of exposed piping and darkly painted I-beams running along everything. The Rotunda itself was beautiful, an exceptional welcome to the new ballpark, with some genuinely inspirational inscriptions along the walls and floor. Near the center of the floor are a giant pair of bright-blue numbers, 42, behind markings representing Robinson's footprints. This area was mobbed with people taking photos as the game ended, and it made me really happy to see it. The whole thing was reverent and historical but still accessible and human-scale, like the game itself. How stuffy can you be when you are mere feet away from a men's room with dozens of urinals lined in a row?

Food-wise, they had plenty of your typical baseball fare, and tucked behind center field, rght alongside the whiffle ball diamond, is the ridiculous foodie oasis that seemed to really capture the modern Manhattanite's obsession with normal dishes somehow made exotic or locally grown or inexplicably expensive. Blue Smoke! Shake Shack! Fancy beers! Fancy tacos! It was unbelievable. The ribs were ridiculous, although I found them really hard to eat and could have used more wet naps.

Anyways, the day was perfect -- bright blue skies, a breeze keeping the flags lining the top of the stands in full view. Our seats were right along the first base line, giving us a great view of most of the action. The game was quick, with awesome pitching by Johan Santana that made up for the general lack of batting action. I tried to take a few photos with the old iphone, but between the bright sun and the barbecue sauce smeared all over my fingers (and face, let's keep it real) it was sort of challenging.

Here's a view of the infield from our seats. These seats were so good, the first thing I thought about as we settled in was that we could be killed by a foul ball in the blink of an eye. It was exciting!
Here's everyone going crazy as Mr. Met started shooting t-shirts into the crowd:
What a great day. I can't wait to go back. It made me want to buy a whole bunch of Mets stuff, too, like a cap, although wearing a baseball hat here is like making a strong political statement that half of everyone else will find extremely obnoxious. Like if you walked around with an "I'm GLAD we're in Iraq!" hat. Not that being a Mets fan is equivalent, but I would feel pressure to be knowledgeable and ready to defend the team, especially since a lot of these smarmy corporate types I tend to spend time with these days are usually Yankees fans. I just don't know if I'm ready for that commitment. But days like this definitely push me in that direction.

"The-Dream is everywhere"

The best part of the current New Yorker, besides the beautiful cover and the articles I wish I could write, is the fact that the main essay in the back section is on my favorite, The-Dream. He has a new album out this spring, nipping on the heels of "Love/Hate," which you may recall dominated my sonic life for most of 2008. Sasha Frere-Jones is my favorite music writer -- he can capture its beauty and complexity in a way that always leaves me fumbling. His genius, though, is in the fact that he shares some of my tastes, which is how I can vouch for his brilliance.

Anyways, the new Dream album, "Love vs. Money," is great. He and his collaborator, Tricky Stewart, have not strayed far from the successful formula of their last venture, and they are still playing in the same universe of "ella"s and "eh"s and "Aye!"s. This time around, though, Dream is more ambitious about his skills and his place in the current R&B firmament. His singing has improved, with more traditional vocal flecks and R&B stylings. He offers a tribute to R. Kelly, then slyly supplants him in the final line of the song. Besides the swagger and good humor that characterized the last album, he attempts to lay the groundwork for the larger theme of the title, love vs. money. His songs about money -- "if she wanna make love on the edge of the world, I'll buy it" -- are knowing and briefly convincing. The last 90 seconds of "Fancy," for example, capture the intoxication and confidence and romance of wealth in a way that is genuinely exciting. It makes you want to live in that song.

Since the last album grew on me over such a long period of time, I'm trying to keep my expectations low for this venture and just enjoy it as it comes. Several tracks hooked me immediately: "Take U Home 2 My Mama," "My Love" with Mariah, "Walkin on the Moon" with Kanye, the "Rockin That Thing" remix. I love this guy.

As usual, Sasha Frere-Jones got it exactly right in the magazine:

Hip-hop allowed R&B singers to become aggressive again, to make the language blunt, and to admit a little bit of selfishness into the nice-guy routine. Having run that particular program, R&B is now following [The-Dream and Tricky Stewart] to a more subtle and complex area, where aggression and tenderness are equally represented.

Slow pitch

One of the best things about adulthood, bar none, is the fact that no one makes you participate in organized youth sports. I spent a lot of time in my formative years playing youth sports: cheering on my teammates as they charged ahead of me in the batting lineup, bantering with the assistant coaches as I sat out the inning in the dugout, winning the end-of-season awards for Most Sportsmanlike, or, even more humiliatingly, Most Improved. As a kid I would literally spend the entire schoolday dreading Little League practice, wondering what new failure or humiliation might be waiting for me there.

Through the years I sort of improved: my hand-eye coordination got better, and I learned the value of hustling. Even if you are truly bad at something, if you really hustle, you can generally get by all right. (This is true of everything.) In basketball I was able to snatch rebounds and really thrash the ball around to shake off other players, and I was tenacious at defense, keeping my eye on my opponent's midsection so he couldn't fake me out. In baseball, after I would completely miscalculate a line drive or a fly, I would run extremely quickly to wherever it landed on the ground and hurl it back towards the infield. There was a real upward trend.

Now, of course, I'm a grown-ass man, with a wife, an advanced degree, a professional career, my own apartment, copious student loan debt, and the freedom to fill my leisure time as I see fit. Rarely in the last decade has this included organized sports, save from individual efforts like running, which doesn't involve catching things. Yet tomorrow, dear reader, I will be playing on the firm's softball team, as we face some other corporate team at a ballfield on Roosevelt Island. That's right -- it's time to play Little League for adults, except now, rather than play with random kids from other elementary schools, I get to play with my coworkers! Awesome!

Obviously I am not going into this unprepared. Last Monday, when I found out that I would have to be playing softball in a little over a week, I promptly went to Sports Authority and spent about $60 on miscellaneous equipment. I also spent another obscene amount of cash to rent a batting cage at Chelsea Piers on Saturday. Anna, John, Mona and Ashesh, who were very good sports about everything, accompanied me. It was actually a lot of fun, even though we were surrounded by children's birthday parties. As I stood in the cage, my body ratcheted into the familiar position -- knees bent, shoulders cocked back, forearms tense, breathing steadily, whimpering slightly -- I felt the same good old sense of panic. Blood pounding in my temples, queasiness in my gut, the whole deal.

By the end of the hour (at which point we had all thoroughly lost interest in batting) I was feeling a lot better. After a couple of tragicomic whiffs at the beginning, I was making contact with every single slow, loping pitch, knocking the softballs into some solid line drives and a few angry grounders. I realized that I made better contact if I stepped a little farther back from the plate. I felt confident, even though most of my hits felt ugly against the bat, giving me that ringing feeling in my hands, like I was batting with a piece of rebar.

So that's where things are. Tomorrow night is softball night, unless it rains or something, which would obviously be horrible. In the evenings I have been oiling up the new baseball glove I bought, which feels cheap and plasticky on my hand, and there was a moment the other night when I smelled the leather, and I threw the ball into the pocket and held it there, and I realized I was actually kind of excited to get out there and see what happens. Not that this is redemption, or that I even need redemption, but maybe I will surprise myself. It could be something good, you never know. Batter up...

Zombie law firm

Whenever I find myself alone in the office, late at night or on the weekends, my mind often turns to how I would defend myself if I was attacked by zombies. Inside the perimeter of offices along the exterior, the core of the floor is a dense warren of narrow hallways and alcoves. There are elevator shafts no one uses, doors that are never opened, behind which you can hear the building groan and howl. Coming up through the night elevators deposits you in a dark, empty room, and a security card is required to gain entry into the offices beyond. When the partitions to the main elevators at shut, even the old print-out sign seems ominous: "Use the night elevators as a LAST RESORT."

Six months in, with a lingering confusion over those inner hallways, the mysterious elevator shafts, and most of all, the constant whine from behind those doors -- honestly, it's as if we're a couple dozen floors above the gates of hell -- I do find myself thinking of zombies. Not the slow, stately kind, with their predictable lurching and almost adorably simple agendas -- I'm talking about the hyperactive, "28 Days Later"-style zombies: fast, enraged, and mean. Presumably these zombies were lawyers once.

Sometimes when I look down the long, empty corridors, lined with vacant offices and silent from the usual weekday din, I imagine seeing some agitated zombie scuttling down the hall, mouth agape and screaming a loud shrill cry, like the sound from that damn elevator shaft. I dart into a nearby office and slam the door behind me. It won't or can't lock, and the Aeron rolling chair is useless to keep it shut. Leaning against the door with all my might, there is a sudden thud as the zombie throws himself against the door from the other side, and I feel a ringing in my body from the impact. I can briefly see the zombie's twisted face mashed against the frosted glass panel beside the door. Enraged, he snarls and momentarily retreats. Holding my breath, knowing what's coming, I try to ground my feet into the muted colors of the carpet, desperate to find some leverage to keep him out, to strengthen my hold on the door. With a piercing scream, a sound like the air itself tearing away in front of me, the zombie hurls himself against the door. I am filled with horror as he comes blazing into the office, a gust of bitterness, coppery and pungent, filling my lungs as as he tumbles on top of me and we fall behind the desk. Animal panic rises in me as I sense the zombie's teeth gnashing near my skin, as I realize that his brittle dry fingers are clamped on my body. Feeling as if I am on fire, as if there is nothing else in the world besides my own survival, I slam him against the credenza and he yelps -- I shove his head back with the butt of my palm, momentarily disgusted by the softness of his forehead, and drive him into the cheap wood paneling of the office furniture. Taking advantage of his confusion, I reach to the shelf above to grab a copy of Siegel's New York Practice, 5th edition -- 900 pages, hardback, of everything a young attorney needs to know about the practice of law in the Empire State. Standing up and gripping it tightly, I strike him backhandedly and shove him upwards, over the credenza and against the glass of the window -- after a moment of pressure there is quick sharp rush as the glass shatters, and the zombie is yelling in fury and then horror as he goes tumbling out the window, a thrashing figure engulfed in a rain of glass, plummeting down to 50th street far below. I am standing there in the wrecked office, breathing heavily as a new wind gusts inward from the street, holding my New York Practice as loose papers -- cases and briefs and memos and articles -- swirl around me, until eventually the coppery bitter smell is gone and all that is left is the air of the city, forcing itself inside this new unexpected home I have created.

That's what I end up thinking about, being alone in the office on weekends or at night. There are some benefits in realizing you're the only one around. Obviously, you can bring reading materials to the restroom with impunity. Yet eventually my thoughts always turn to this kind of thing: the rooms I haven't seen, the hallways I can't master, and the constant churning sound of the elevator shaft, rising up from someplace unfamiliar into the the office we think we know.

Boy, this turned out kind of weird, didn't it?