Sea Oak

Too many things going on right now to write a real entry about last night's George Saunders reading. Suffice it to say that Saunders is an amusing reader, who knows how to gage his audience's attention span. I wish he didn't read his recent New Yorker riff because I wasn't crazy about it to begin with; it was too Dave Barry and, in my opinion, he could have ended it one page early.
Yet I am not entirely fit to be critiquing Saunders's work, as I was just introduced to his writing this past fall, after meeting several friends who had Saunders as a professor at Syracuse University. One such friend, ADAM FRUCCI, was at the reading last night and graciously introduced me to Saunders.
ADAM FRUCCI is a tall guy, with thick eyebrows, a penchant for pita sandwiches and improvisational theater, and an exceptional propensity for being a smart ass. Sorry, ladies, he's taken. His lovely girlfriend, Mollie, was also in attendance last night and perceptively questioned what "shit they put in the water at Syracuse to make everybody so crazy about Saunders."
This is a valid point. Saunders is not the next David Sedaris or Dave Eggers. No, Saunders is not an exceptional super-star writer, but he is honest both in his craft and his presentation. He knows how to deal with an audience and is well skilled at the art of public reading. He really reads his stories, but does not feel the need for theatrics, and gamely interacts with his audience. This is very important because, let's face it, the best part of any reading is always the Q&A session. Saunders is funny, a la Sam Lipsyte, but his teaching background makes him more personable and thus more approachable as a reader and an audience member.
I picked up a copy of his new book, In Persuasion Nation, browsed through it on the train ride home (gladly uninterruped by exhibitionists) and am looking forward to reading it in its entirety. So far, each story seems to encompass the general theme of which Saunders spoke at the reading: eschewing the barriers of religious extremism and materialistic culture for that of harmony in our increasingly globalized society. Saunders's main weapon in underscoring these false dichotimies is humor and a satirical imagination. You don't need shit in your water to find value in his talent, although I'm sure he would like the plot twist.

You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)

Listen, the truth. Last night I was heading home on the train, when three people decided to perch in front of me. I was sitting down and they were standing directly above, holding onto the bar.

The three passengers are two females and one male. The women are taller than average, brunettes, and the man is stumpy and balding, with a briefcase. They start talking about a friend, who is coming to visit next weekend from LA, and how they wish their friend would just move to New York already.

After comparing the size of one another's hands, the two women start making out. No big deal. Why they decide to make me privy to this PG rated peep show, I do not know, because there is plenty of available real estate on that train. I figure it's my new haircut.

As the two women are making out, stumpy man starts reading the paper, a folded over, two-day-old Wall Street Journal. I pretend to read my book (The Master and Margarita, highly recommended), which proves to be quite taxing, considering there is this couple practically making out in my lap.

After about three stops, it's time for one of the women to get off the train. They all do their goodbyes; the two women embrace and the one leaving nods casually to the stumpy man.

About one minute after she's gone, get this: the remaining woman starts making out with the stumpy man!

What in the hell kind of set up is going on with this threesome? Is the woman who left aware that her girlfriend is making out with the stumpy man? The two women didn't look like hookers, but how does a stumpy guy like that swing a tall brunette? Are they in love? And what's in the briefcase? AND WHY ARE THEY STANDING DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME??

I look to my right, for some source of comfort. There's a dude sitting there listening to his iPod, completely oblivious. I look to my left, across the aisle, and there's a small family. A family! They don't notice anything out of the oridnary, though, because the two little kids are fighting and the mom is trying to garner control.

So I look in front of me, beyond the making out couple (or something), and I see an advertisement for Club Med that goes as follows:
"Wait until the person reading over your shoulder is done before turning the page. This world can be an amazing place. Share it with us."

I am not one for irony. I think it's a cheap device and entirely too worn-out these days. But how could I ignore it in the face of this situation? Make the world a better place. Share a page; share a partner.

The Prisoner

...Even weirder still, is having a Myspace account from prison! What do you think about that, eh? A couple of weeks ago, I met this guy, Michael, whose brother is in prison. Michael's brother, Matthew, was not wrongly committed; he's not a martyr; he just made a mistake and now he's doing the time.

Inmate 241323

What is interesting about this jailbird, though, is that he maintains an active Myspace account from behind bars, despite the fact that prisoners have no no access to computers, let alone the Internet.

I suppose that, like any of us, Matthew wants to feel connected with his friends. As he explains it, “I'm presently serving three years in the Alabama State Prison system and I went in June 13, 2005. My brother Michael has agreed to create a myspace profile for me. While I can't actually check my messages and friend requests myself, my brother sends me print-outs of my comments, etc. I keep up with things that go on in the prison, and write him letters, which will be posted as blogs.”

For his general interests, he lists: RELEASE DATE MAY 17, 2008, women, mail call, good books, cigarettes, instant coffee, tech school, tv, snacks, popcortn and visiting days.

And if I hadn't met Michael, I would think that the prisoner's site was a hoax. But some of the blog entries are too mundane to be fabricated, for instance, the entry describing Matthew's excitement over receiving deodorant. And there are some entries, about men who cheat on their baby's mamas with other men, that you don't find on the average Myspace account or blog. In pitching a Myspace site for his brother, Michael has set up a shrine of sorts for a man who has no real use for the Internet. But Michael is just being a good brother and, even though the blog entries are not primary records, he is doing the most he can to keep his incarcerated brother connected to the outside world. I think Rupert Murdoch would appreciate that.

The Empty Page

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Ode to Street Hassle

Somewhere in the middle of last weekend, I was unable to kick the habit of saying everything in a Jersey accent. This game is highly addictive and best played with an accomplice because otherwise, you're just the annoying schmuck in the corner, muttering to yourself about the BQE and Yonkuz.

Friday night, I had a date with a dame and we went out lookin for trouble. So we headed over to another dame's apartment and watched these three girls gettin decked out for a night at Scores. I'll tell you what, those girls were gettin into a helluva lot more trouble than we were! We ended up taking the bridge and tunnel over to Brooklyn and waited around at a bar, talking smack for a while. I told her about my new Jimmy Choos and my mudder in law on Long GUY LEN, even though I don't got none of those things. She told me bout a boy she's seeing in The Bricks who says to her the odder night, "Hey, less order a pie." And she told him to f--k off cause she wanted a real meal for once. And I says, "Better yet, tell that slob you ain't goin nowhere wit him til you see a goddamned ring." Saturday mornin, I woke up smellin' like Jersey, cause there was this bonfire on Friday night that was outta control. Dat night, I met up with my gal, Tina, at her older brotha's party in The City. We get there and the only people in the shit are a bunch of broads. So I say to Tina's brotha, "Yo Ian, you're a real sweet heart, but we didn't drag our asses out in the pouring rain to hang out with a bunch of ladies, if you know what I'm sayin. If we wanted that, we would've stayed at home and watched Sarah Jessica Parker on the television set." Then Tina dragged us outta there, even though it was real crummy outside and the rain was totally ruining my new do. "Yo Freako," she goes, "we fit togetha like leggos. Do me a solid and come see my fella at this bachelorette party wit me." Then we're in the back of the cab, there's three of us, and I ask the cabbie, "Yo cabbie! This is a good song, how's about turnin it up?" And oh, my gosh, the cabbie had better music than any other joint we hit up that night. We finally got to the bar and and I say to the bartender, "Yo, how's about a whiskey sour on the rocks?" And he says, "For you, doll face, anything." And that was that.

Now I'm back at my office job and the boss says to me, "How's about scanning these pages and puttin em on da server?"

And you know what I says to her? I says, "Yo, forget about it!"

WINGSTROKE

Whenever I’m in a bookstore and I can’t decide what to buy, I go either for a Nabokov or a Martin Amis. There is no definite link between these two writers, except that they are both sure bets. Well, and the fact that Amis is obviously influenced by Nabokov. His favorite sentence of all time is even from Lolita. I don’t remember which sentence and I don’t feel like looking it up now, but that’s what he claimed two years ago, when I saw him lecture in his home country.
In person, Amis is just like his writing: sharp, with a twisted sense of humor. His ego is sky high, but he has the goods to back it up, unlike a lot of writers/people, so it’s fine by me.

ANYWAY, including a profile on the Donner family, this week’s New Yorker has several notable articles in it. One of which is a fictional account, written by Amis, of the hijacker that took down Flight 5930 on September 11: The Last Days of Muhammad Atta. This story is fairly controversial because in it, Amis imparts a foggy rationale for the terrorists’ casual detachment in the manner of the attacks. Here’s an excerpt from the story that occurs after Muhammade Atta nonchalantly goes through the routine of checking his luggage through security:

“Whatever else terrorism had achieved in the past few decades, it had certainly brought about a net increase in world boredom. It didn’t take very long to ask and answer those three questions- about fifteen seconds. But those dead-time questions and answers were repeated, without any variation whatever, hundreds of thousands of times a day. If the planes operation went ahead as planned, Muhammad Atta would bequeath more, perhaps much more, dead time, planet-wide. It was appropriate, perhaps, and not paradoxical, that terror should also sharply promote its most obvious opposite. Boredom.”

Along with having a sky-high ego, Martin Amis is a dickhead, which shows in the brazen masculinity of his writing that continuously borders on chauvinism. ((However, he’s really good at being a dickhead, unlike the dickhead writers/people who aren’t so skilled in the trade, yet persist as dickheads anyway.))

This story is no exception. It isn't hard to make a terrorist out to be an asshole; Amis undoubtedly excels at earning his readers' full disgust with Muhammad Atta. Sparing no particulars, he tells us, for instance, that Atta hasn't passed a bowel movement in over four months. He shows a pissing contest of sorts between the terrorists about the varying degrees of piety in their individual suicides. Amis uses Atta's religious beliefs as a scapegoat for the character's masochistic disdain for the opposite sex. Even the one woman who Atta finds attractive is described at once by her lavish beauty ("with hair like a billboard for a chocolate sundae") and then, two sentences later, by Atta's desire to destroy her face.

Yet it is by humanizing the terrorist, who felt no need to humanize his victims, that Amis is performing one of his amazing feats, which brings me constantly to seek out his work in a congested bookstore inventory. Nabokov would certainly admire Amis's narrative of death, the poetic force used to describe the plane's descent, and Atta's last moment, "Even as his flesh friend and his blood boiled, there was life, kissing its fingertips. Then it echoed out, and ended."

Amis isn't a sure bet for everybody, though. A lot of the Brits resent him because he left his wife for a much younger woman, dumped his literary agent in England for an American agent, and, the biggest 'fuck you' of all, he spent something like $40,000 to get his teeth fixed. Oh and his writing isn't always up to par.

"The Last Days of Muhammad Atta" is supposedly the most controversial piece of a greater collection of short stories to be released sometime this fall. I didn't find the story to be that divisive, not because I have no heart for the victims of September 11, but because I'm a seasoned reader of the writer's hard-nosed tactics for shock value, to the point where I'm almost desensitized. Listing Martin Amis as one of your favorite writers is like when you have that one friend who always ends up offending all of your other friends, who are like, "Why do you hang out with that bitch?" And you're constantly defending her, "She makes me laugh." At which point, you're kind of a bitch, too.


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Public Service Announcement

Do not get your hair cut by a student, no matter how fancy or hip the salon is or what bargain you think you are getting. At first I liked the idea of helping a sister out; she was a student who, like me, is just starting out in the city, and she needed a hair model. I've been meaning to get a haircut for some time now and I liked the idea of paying $20 for what would normally be an $85 style. We would have been okay, too, if it weren't for that damned curly-topped teacher of hers. "No!" Chop. "You're not doing it right!" Chop. "You need to move WITH the hair!" Chop. Now my hair is shorter than it's ever been, or at least since birth. It's if-I-didn't-like-boys-you'd-think-I-was-butch short. I don't know which is more nauseating, my reflection or this. I wish I could find some deeper meaning in this experience, perhaps about the teacher's imposing presence in the creative process or the clashing of opinions on aesthetics, but all I really feel like doing is calling my mother and crying. I hate to be superficial, but it's my hair and I wear it every day!

Don't forget it's poetry month

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

photo by Jake

Transparent Radiation

Last weekend presented more of the same. Friday night an angelic friend was in town, from the land of Virginia, playing a show in Brooklyn. The music was heavenly and we all held hands and raised our heads to the sky, shouting out praises to our redeemer. Later, we rejoiced and shared stories about footprints in the sand and revelations of hard times that have since passed. Much later that night, I headed back to Manhattan, where I had a meeting with an apostle underneath a lamppost on the corner of Rivington and Orchard. Saturday morning was reserved for healing and praying to my saviors, all of them. I had the pleasure of speaking to a long distance saint and all of our sins were washed away in the vastness of that great wide ocean. And then I prayed some more and met up with a local saint for another prayer group and we snacked on those little crackers that you put on your knees and we drank wine for communal purposes only. Sunday morning, I woke up early and decided to call everybody I have ever resented and mend every bridge I have ever burned. But nobody was home and that isn't the kind of thing you want to leave on a voicemail. Sunday afternoon, I hunted around the isle of my newly adopted city, with my beloved missionaries, looking for Easter eggs that were buried in the concrete and we held engaging conversations with statues in Central Park. Then I went home and prayed some more with my divine roommate, even though she has yet to realize that Godliness is next to cleanliness.

That passed the time/ It would have passed in any case/ Yes, but not so rapidly

photo by Joe

A darling sent this to me today with the subject line 'Good Friday to You!'. It is not for the weak of stomach but, then again, neither was this past week.

Stink-Foot

Yesterday, I went to a job interview at an office that shares a space with Cigar Aficionado Magazine and there is nothing like leaving your own office in the middle of the work day to go sit in another office. Change of scenery, you know what I’m saying. As I was waiting in the front room, three men emerged from one of the offices, puffing on cigars. They could’ve cared less about the smoking ban, as though because they were of a certain age, they were exempted from the ban. But why wouldn’t they smoke in the waiting area of a cigar magazine? It makes perfect sense. They sat down with me, all jolly and puffing away, and offered me a cigar. Who wouldn’t love a cigar on a Wednesday afternoon to lessen some pre-interview jitters? They cut the tip off for me and lit it. I’ve never smoked a cigar before but I tell you what, friends, you’re not supposed to nurse that shit. Maybe if I’d read Cigar Aficionado on a regular basis, or, I dunno, paid attention to anybody smoking a cigar, I would know that you’re not supposed to inhale it like you would a joint or a regular cigarette. Because then you would feel like puking. The three businessmen got a real kick out of me coughing my brains out. “How old are you? Steve, I think you just gave a cigar to a seventeen-year-old!” They couldn’t stop laughing and the receptionist put down her nail file ((i didn’t know that girls still used those)) and she joined them. Everybody was laughing it up. I’m so funny when I’m choking on my own exhaust. When it was finally time for my meeting, I lacked the amount of pent-up confidence I usually have going into an interview. After all, I wouldn’t hire somebody who’d made it to the age of 24 without knowing the proper way to smoke a cigar.

And On the Third Day, She Really Had To Work

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"Hey, Toby, we hung out this weekend, why didn't you mention me in your blog?"

Because, Adam, this isn't Page 6.

But I will mention that I sat across the table from Desira, who effortlessly manages to be too fashionable for the fashion capital, and now all I want to wear are her creations.

Living Proof

The other night, at a bar, I heard this story from a stranger, a friend of a friend, named Brian:
Brian's friend, we'll call her Sarah, was taking care of her friend's dog while she was away in the Bahamas. So Sarah went over to the apartment one afternoon to check on the dog. When she got to the apartment, she couldn't find the dog. She looked everywhere: she couldn't find the dog; she couldn’t find the dog; she couldn't find the dog. Finally, she found the dog. The dog was lying underneath the bed, dead.
Sarah didn't know what to do. She called a company in New York that specializes in freezing pets for up to two weeks after death. Sarah decided to take the dog to the repository until the owner came back from the Bahamas.
This proved to be problematic: how is she going to get the dog uptown to the freezing company? The dog was apparently very big and heavy, dead weight. So Sarah put the dog in a suitcase, on wheels, and dragged it to the train station.
At the train station, she was having a difficult time getting the suitcase down the stairs, as the dog was quite heavy. A man approached her and offered his assistance in bringing the suitcase down the stairs. Sarah accepted the favor and let the man help her down the stairs with the suitcase, which contained the dead dog. "This thing sure is heavy! What do you have in here?" he asked her.
Sarah didn't know what to say so she told him it contained everything she owned. The man took one look at Sarah, who was at that point quite frazzled, grabbed the suitcase and ran off into the night, dead dog in tote.

Now. The details of this story are rather hazy. It was told in a loud bar, as a second-hand account. I filled in a few of the details myself; I assigned a name to the girl who was house sitting for her friend on vacation. I don’t know the name of the dog or what kind of dog it was. Additionally, I was unable to find any such company in New York that specializes in dead pet freezing, which makes me wonder where exactly “Sarah” was going with her suitcase that contained the dead dog. What train station was “Sarah” at when her suitcase, containing the dead dog, was stolen by a man obviously strapped for cash? This story went from a second-hand (Brian) account to a third-hand (me). Now, it’s in my blog. If you (fourth-hand) were to recount the story to a friend of yours (fifth-hand), it would either lose several more details or grow completely new details. Except you read it on the Internet, from a blog no less. So does that turn this story into an urban myth?

Hanging On the Telephone

The following conversation occurred on Sunday morning around 1:00:

Me: HEEEEYYYY! Hold on, let me go outside where I can hear you!!!!!
Caller: What are you doing?
Me: I'm sowblighingshwildgdoates
Caller: What??
Me: Sorry, it's loud in here.
Caller: I thought you were outside. What are you doing?
Me: I'M SOWING MY WILD OATS
Caller: Where are you?
Me: HAPPY ENDING! This is fun, you should be down here. You should come down here. This is fun. It's so fun!
Caller: Where is it?
Me: It's HAPPY ENDING!
Caller: What street are you on?
Me: Broome! I'm on Broome Street. Chinatown. You should come down here. It's my friend Kristina's birthday. It's an ending! It's happy! You should be here!
Caller: Where are you again?
Me: Broome street and something. I don't know. It's between Forysythe and Eldridgabridge and Avenue A and Avenue B and you take the 6 to Astor or Bleeker and then you walk a while. You'll find it. We're going to a karaoke bar!! You have to come to that, too!!
Caller: Yeah, I can't understand you right now. Are you drunk?
Me: Yes. No. Never. Where are you? Are you coming down here? YOU SHOULD!!
Caller: Yeah, I don't think I'm going to make it.
Me: Hello?
Me: Hello?

New Strategies

Let’s just get one thing straight right now: DJ Spooky, aka Paul D. Miller, is one of the coolest performers working the music scene today. He's so cool that when my very generous friend asked me if I wanted to get on the list for Thursday's show, I wrote 'yes,please' and hit reply without giving it a second thought. For that reason, it would only make sense for DJ Spooky's musically inclined friends to be as cool as he is. So when he gathered a handful of these friends on stage last night at Symphony Space, it was hard not to feel cool yourself, even if you were sitting on the sidelines.
DJ Spooky, the curator of the event, introduced himself as the host, of a loft-like party, set on stage, presenting a live mix tape in which a few of his favorite musicians performed.
All musicians performed solo pieces that presented groundbreaking, multi-cultural innovations that combined digital media with old, acoustic and analog media. This reformulation of the old into the new included: Matthew Shipp, a pianist in the traditional sense yet using unconventional modes of composition; Vijay Iyer, another pianist, whose accompanying laptop composed minimalist pieces in the vein of Philip Glass; Guillermo E. Brown, who did a bunch of technical acts with a dub system that I’m still struggling to comprehend; Ben Neill, with a trumpet/laptop combination that would have impressed the progressive side of Miles Davis; Rob Swift, whose last name aptly sums up his Grandmaster Flash inspired DJ style of spinning break beats; Pamela Z, presenting the most eclectic combination of operatic vocals with a dance/laptop synthesis and effects pedals; and, finally, Suphala, with, of all things, the tabla, in combination with an iPod. Oh, and DJ Spooky performed, too, although it did seem for him to be a challenge to translate his usual club vibe to a stationary audience on the Upper West Side. For the record, DJ Spooky is much cooler when he's playing music than when he's lecturing. For the encore, everybody arrived on stage to perform together and the effect was nothing less than spectacular.
I’d never seen anything like what these musicians presented last night and I was thoroughly impressed, if not blown away, by the ease at which each performer managed to bring together a 21st Century update on old style instruments. As DJ Spooky so elegantly said, in between as many verbal prods at Bush as he could muster, the presentation was a practice in collaboration versus conflict. It was all about using new media to ones advantage, as opposed to struggling against technology.

The 13th Floor Elevators

Since my move to New York, I would estimate that I’ve ridden in somewhere between 50 to 100 elevators. Most of them have been fairly standard. The elevator in my office building, which I take at least three times a day, amounting to about fifteen times per week, has no frills. The more corporate office buildings have elevators that are equipped with television monitors, broadcasting up to the minute CNN updates and weather reports. The first time I saw one of these, I felt like breaking out my yokel accent, exclaiming, “Look, y’all! There’s a telavision set in this here elevatoor!!” But I didn’t.

My most treasured elevator experience thus far occurred in Chelsea, where I had my first encounter with an elevator man. His sole purpose is to guide passengers through the ten story building, making sure that nobody gets off on the wrong floor and is delivered to their destination in tact. Without his assistance, people would probably get trapped in the iron, accordion gate of the elevator, meeting their doom in the form of a gory partition of hands and body. The elevator man had made a little home out of his elevator and it was actually quite cozy. On one side of the lift, hung a poster-sized rendition of Guernica and, for his own pleasure, there was a lawn chair (one of the fancy kinds, with cup holders), a small cooler, to store fresh beverages, and a mini radio/TV combo. He seemed genuinely happy with his job and I was happy that he was happy. I was in this building for an interview and though I didn’t get the job, I think I was less disappointed about my lost job opportunity than the fact that I wouldn’t get to see that elevator man every morning.

Last Friday evening, as I was leaving work, I approached the elevator outside my office at the exact same time as a man who works down the hall from me. He’s attractive, an architect, and this was probably the third time we had ridden down the fifteen stories together. I didn’t think anything of it, until he turned to me, between floors 14 and 13, and said, “So…would you like to hang out sometime outside the elevator?”

I don’t respond well to these kinds of proposals. I mean I know I come across as incredibly charming and amiable, as evidenced in my last post, but when push comes to shove, I am an awkward, awkward creature. “Ha! This is a nice elevator, isn’t it? Very sturdy, dependable.” It’s also a very, very slow elevator. With all of these advances in technology today, why don’t we have faster elevators yet? I’m talking Star Trek teleporter shit, that’s what I want in my office building. I want to be able to step into an elevator and reach my destination in under two seconds and if the elevator flashes neon blue lights and visions of the future in the process, even better.

But what I really want to know is this: Where did all of the elevator music go? What happened to elevator music?? Has it become extinct because everybody owns an iPod and is able to provide a personal soundtrack to uncomfortable elevator rides? Does anybody know? Can any of you provide some sort of explanation? Answers, I need answers!

"Hey, Toby, why don't you just get a diary?"

dear diary,

wednesdays are the pits. today, at work, i wrestled with a copy machine and a scanner and i think i'm starting to lose it. there's no need to relay this anecdote because everybody has seen the movie. i shouldn't complain about my job; i'm lucky to have it and it's really not that bad. it's just not how i envisioned my first job out of college, you know? meanwhile, dear diary, my right winged roommate has QUIT her job to plan her wedding, which isn't until december, and her fiance is going to pay her rent until then. i'm not even invited to the wedding. i think it's because of that one time when i asked her to clean up every once in a while, especially when she cooks three course dinners for her fiance and leaves food lying around the kitchen for days. she blew up at me, like i was asking her to renounce jesus or something. in turn, i kind of lost it with her, except i don't really know how to fight without cursing and i think she was a little shocked. things have been kind of tense since then and i promise you, dear diary, i will never again choose a roommate off craigslist. while i do applaud anne's unflappable dedication to the church choir, waking up to her practicing vocal chords does little to ease the pain of a sunday morning hangover. i'm getting sick of it, sick of it all. she's probably sitting on the couch right now, eating bonbons and flipping through bridal magazines, while i'm at work, fighting with inanimate objects. anne, if you ever get around to reading this, why don't you get off the internet and clean the kitchen? you're going to make a lousy housewife.

yours truly,
toby

Venus in Furs

Are you fuckin kidding me, New York? Snow isn't so cute in April, just so you know.

photo by Tamara

Here, I have to get back to work, but the following pieces should suffice:

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Outside My Door

Last weekend is a bit muddled, so I’ll spare the details. There was an elevator pitch of sorts, an accidental brush with American Psycho territory, two sets of decoy directions, a street fair, part of a basketball game, bluegrass music, a $5 limo ride, a brisk walk through the deserted meat packing district, a surprise picnic on Roosevelt Island, and two mornings when I went to bed with the sunrise. I think the only time I remembered to breathe was when I was caught behind Frida, my 91-year-old neighbor, who still manages to climb up the five flights of stairs to her apartment step.by.aching.step.