Tuesday, October 23, 2007

we've got boxes



I've been memorizing, stress-eating and staying up too late.
I keep forgetting the quadratic equation and what words like "abstemious" mean.
I miss maple trees.

On Friday, I caught up with long lost Interlochen Beth, a face from my teenage past. After a seven-year correspondence dearth, we reunited in Fort Greene, hugging and exchanging questions like “so, how was the rest of high school?” At the Habana Outpost, a surly man with an unfortunate haircut took our order, gave us food tickets and waved us to the “truck," which turned out to be a real, kitschy transplanted truck on a rain-soaked outdoor patio. We handed our tickets to the cooks and, ten minutes later, still standing under the truck's awning, strained our arms above to retrieve the food and headed back inside. Ultimately, a ridiculous ordeal for mediocre fare. We chatted about college, camp gossiped, played "where are they now?" with former cabinmates, then headed to Bushwick for a party where our "we went to summer camp together" relationship puzzled many and where I repeatedly defended Michigan to a Jersey native.

Saturday brought a mid-morning migraine and sluggish math review, surprisingly unrelated. Took the bus to watch Islands play in Williamsburg, glimpsed and dodged a high school acquaintance, ate a burrito as big as my head and caught another bus for night two in Fort Greene. Ended up in a co-worker's apartment with cigarette smokers, art installations, free wine, a poetry and short story reading, and a performance by the Tin Star Sisters. Another headache on Sunday, brunch in Clinton Hill, more practice tests (god bless the GRE), neglected laundry, then staring at the ceiling, cat napping and writing until heading to Greenpoint for a polka punk band who brought new flair to "Roll out the Barrel," "Who Stole the Kishka?" and other Eastern European classics. Came home to find a gigantic cockroach chilling in my kitchen. Yesterday I doused it with enough Raid to last several lifetimes. Tonight I'm buried in books again, feeling the itch for change and welcoming its possibilities more and more.