The Eternal Struggle

My new favorite joke

What’s a honeymoon salad?

Lettuce alone! Ha!

musings on the kindness of strangers

I’ve been feeling a little low and unattractive as of late, and knew a new haircut was just the thing. What I didn’t expect was for two bookish gentlemen and Vito Acconci would pull me out of a slump first.

Because my hair stylist is always running behind, I stepped into Spoonbill on a drizzly Wednesday night. I wandered around until I saw Acconci’s name on a thick tome hiding behind a bookshelf.

Vito Acconci is one of my favorite poets and artists. He was part of the second generation of the New York school in the 60s and wrote conceptual poetry before moving on to installations and architecture. He does everything, really, and you can see architecture in the structure of his poems. I first noticed him at a PS 1 show chronicalling the history of video art. There was an entire room devoted to Acconci’s work on dozens of video screens. His pieces were so compelling to me and stuck with me for years. Anytime I see his name on any kind of book I snap it up.

This book was the collected issues of 0 to 9, a literary magazine Acconci published with Bernadette Mayer. I flipped through it feverishly, finding some of Acconci’s poems amid Clark Coolidge, Ron Padgett, Ted Berrigan, and Sol LeWitt’s. I knew this book had to come home with me that night.

I don’t know what is was about the way I walked up the cash register. Was I clutching the book tightly to my chest? Did I make a mad dash for the counter? One of two guys lounging behind the counter said, “We should give her a deal on this.”

“I’ll give it to you for 27, that’s 7 dollars off.”

“Is that one of the signed ones?” The man flipped through the book.

“Do you have signed copies,” I asked, hoping to look cool and disaffected but, honestly, I was jumping out of my socks.

“We do have a signed copy of the studio book. Did you see it?”

I shook my head.

“We can give it to you at a bargain basement price.”

He strode over and brought over a book of Acconci’s early poetry. He flipped to the first page and there was a loopy, sprawling signature dated in 2006.

“We’ll give it to you for 20. It was 75.”

When I walked out of Spoonbill into the soup of the evening, my arms around two purple plastic bags, I didn’t even notice the rain.

Some memories

First grade. Art class. Becky Resser and I draw pictures of a Michael Jackson concert. She has a crush on him, so I follow suit. He’s my first crush, followed swiftly by Kevin Bacon in Footloose and Steven Simoni. My picture is a black oval with a red jacket in a sea of faces and stick arms.

Second grade. The guidance counselor visits our class bi-weekly. She spends most of the time talking about warm fuzzies and cold pricklies. In one class, she plays Man in Mirror while passing around a wrapped package. We each take off the top in turn and look inside. It’s, of course, a mirror. She says this is the best gift we can give ourselves, to look into the mirror and like ourselves. Later, in the backseat of our blue station wagon, my brother and I sing Man in the Mirror over and over again.

Fourth or fifth grade or sixth grade, my best friend and I spend weekends in her basement watching MTV. She closes her eyes and holds my hand every time the Thriller video comes on. She is afraid of dead people.

A couple years ago painting Karell’s new apartment, we find records in her closet. We find Off the Wall and Thriller. I take them home and stumble upon my childhood every time I put them on. My sister and I drink Sparks and dance to Beat It in my narrow hallway to get ready to go to Royal Oak most Saturday nights. When we used to go out.

Right now, listening to the BBC’s World Have Your Say. People from Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, Antarctica, Kenya, everywhere are calling in with memories like these. Chuck D is calling in. It’s like Neda wasn’t killed last weekend. The South Carolina governor never went to Argentina. The Health Care Crisis halted. There are no insurgents in Iraq.

This morning, I ask my boyfriend what Michael Jackson wanted his legacy to be.
“I think it’s pretty clear,” he says. “He was the King of Pop.”
“No,” I say. “That’s what his legacy is. What do you think he wanted it to be?”

The problem with being a voracious reader and library lover in New York..

is that everyone else is one, too.

In the New Yorker this week (the summer fiction issue!) there’s a great article about the legend of a Polish author, Bruno Schulz. Schulz isn’t widely read here, so it’s no surprise that there’s only one copy of his collected fiction in the New York Public Library. What is surprising is 25 people before me have already requested this single copy.

I currently have seven books on my hold list. I gradually moved to seventeen (out of eighty-five) on Mary Gaitskill’s new book, which I requested in March. I am number 125 out of 365 people waiting for Colm Tolbin’s new book. Joining mailing lists for literary prizes is a must. If you don’t request the latest Booker Prize winner within minutes of the announcement, good luck getting the book in your hands for six months!

I don’t mind terribly, though. Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy came pretty quickly, as did a collection of Emerson’s essays. A Keynes’ biography came so fast, I didn’t have a chance to pick it up before it was gone again.

What I do mind right now is that the NYPL does not own a single copy of The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble, which was also mentioned in the current New Yorker. I must get my paws on this book, even it means buying it on Amazon together with a Schulz collection, like suggested in their frequently bought together feature. Voracious readers: they’re everywhere.

brooklynbased:

Introducing @GreeneIceCream cart at The General Greene! Homemade flavors incl. burnt honey vanilla+coffee banana chip. M-Th3-11pm F-Su12-12

 We totally have to add this to our Hobo Summer food cart tour.