So I got a job waiting tables. Yesterday afternoon, I happened to walk past Café Lalo, on the Upper West Side, on my way home from the gym. I noticed a “help wanted” sign, so I went in to inquire. I was hired on the spot, despite my gym attire, based on the fact that I could start that evening. The interview process took about three minutes. The owner/manager, a middle-aged Israeli man with a thick accent, interviewed me on a park bench outside the restaurant. The main point of the interview was apparently to make sure that I was a) female and b) alive. These seem to be the primary, possibly only, requirements for becoming a server at this establishment (bonus points if you’re an aspiring actress, model, or Ph.D. candidate in Comp. Lit.).

I haven’t been a waitress since I lived in Paris, but it’s amazing how all restaurants are the same, and yet utterly different. All restaurants are governed by a kind of hermetic logic that almost (but not quite) makes sense within the walls of the restaurant, but nowhere else in the world. For instance - all restaurants have table numbers that make absolutely no sense. Table 7 is always by table 25, which is right next to table 3. At one restaurant I worked at in Paris, the table order went from one to eight, and then jumped to 10 – there was no table 9. When I asked why discovered that “il y avait une table neuf” – there once was a table nine, explained Nadia, the restaurant owner, in a somber tone which implied that the table numbers had not been changed in memorandum. Table nine had been a large and beautiful round table; but it went to furniture heaven shortly after 16 (I guess she counted) inebriated Englishmen, members of some sports team, unwisely used it as an impromptu karaoke stage when a popular song by Oasis (French pronunciation: Waz-eez) came on the radio. This sort of thing was not an isolated occurrence at Restaurant L’Escapade, largely due to the gimmick of offering wine “a volonte” (which translates roughly to “all-u-can-drink,” or more precisely, “all-u-can-puke”) with every meal. Most Europeans, when knackered, can’t help but do two things: sing and pull down their pants. Americans just become violent and shoot people, which is so much more civilized.

Another thing about restaurants is how each one has a uniquely irrational language of abbreviations, slightly less difficult to master than some aboriginal click language where all the words begin with exclamation points. Restaurant abbreviations remind me of the secret language of codes used by real estate brokers and travel agents. (2 br w/EIK, conv. ERB, SHWF, IRX shared with FR. Near EWR, easy commute CDG.) Why, for instance, is the code for “Newark Liberty International” EWR? I’m sure there’s a reason. Maybe there was once another airport on that site, but it was broken by 16 drunken Englishmen.

- posted by Marguerite @ 12:54 PM

 
Happy Bloomsday!

Yep, a hundred years ago today, on June 16, 2004, Leopold Bloom “ate with relish the inner organs of beast and fowl.” Since that time, Ulysses has become one of the most beloved “Cliff’s Notes” in history. With more than a million copies in print, James Joyce's immortal novel has gone unread in more than 40 languages, and "Bloomsday" has become a sacred holiday for people who appreciate a literary excuse to drink lots of beer.

Below is my essay comparing and conrasting Leopold Bloom and the owl from the old "Tootsie Pop" commericals:

In James Joyce’s poignant novel, Ulysses, Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Molly experience a full range of human punctuation, by which I mean the poignant lack thereof. This is very symbolic, by which I mean it is difficult to understand, which lends a certain poignancy to the text. See??? The entire novel takes place in the course of one day, although it takes much longer than one day to read, which further illustrates that it is very poignant. Throughout Ulysses, there are many multiple layers of symbolism, also known as “punctuation.” Joyce’s use of symbolism is significant because it is frequently symbolic of other symbols.

In reading Ulysses, the reader is reminded of, like, the owl in the old “Tootsie Pop” commercials. Like Leopold Bloom, the owl - which is symbolic of wisdom in addition to Tootsie Rolls - wonders things. Specifically, he wonders, “How many licks does it take to get to the delicious center of a Tootsie Pop?” Which is symbolic of, “How long would it actually take to read Ulysses?” Yet, after a few “licks,” which are symbolic of “paragraphs,” the reader gives in and downloads a Ulysses-related term paper off the Internet. While at first glance, this may appear to be “cheating,” it is in fact very poignant, because it is clearly symbolic. And, because it is not obvious what this is symbolic of, it is all the more poignant.



- posted by Marguerite @ 12:22 PM

 
They say April is the cruelest month, but in New York - it’s June.

This is what I call the Amnesia Season. Twice a year, our city has a window of time when the weather is so temperate and lovely that you can’t imagine why, just a month before, you had vowed to leave this $*%!# place and never look back.

The Amnesia Seasons occur in the late spring and early fall, when the City takes on the colors of our most cinematic fantasies. After spending all winter (or summer) researching the housing market in Bangladesh, your exorbitantly priced apartment suddenly seems like a bargain; your dead-end job is a reasonable means to the end of staying in the most wonderful city in the world.

During the spring Amnesia, New Yorkers are drunk on the miracle of leaving the house without looking like we should be standing behind a team of huskies. It’s the time of year when you look up in the sky and see this bright, flashy orb, and you wonder what it’s advertising, until you realize – it’s the sun. We take to the streets, like in some ridiculous musical, experiencing that feeling we cautiously refer to as … “happiness.” This is when we see nature (or at least, our version of it) continuing the cycle of life. Tube tops and sandals come out of the mini-storage units, like tulips from dormant bulbs. Cafés set up the first illegal sidewalk terraces of the season, cautiously, like baby birds getting ready to leave the nest. Baby birds start to leave their nests, so they can crap on the patrons of sidewalk cafes …

A few weeks after the Amnesia Season, it’ll be morbidly hot or ridiculously cold, as the case may be. But by then, you’ve already re-signed your lease, or taken a new job, and so you curse your fate and spend the winter or summer plotting your escape to a more hospitable climate. “This time, I won’t forget!” we say. “I won’t put up with it any more!”

Until the next time.

It’s like dating someone who treats you badly, but at strategic moments he/she sweeps you off to a romantic weekend in Paris, so you forget about what a big jerk that person is, and get sucked in even deeper. And then he gives you the cold shoulder for a while, so you decide to break it off, but then he writes a comedic love haiku on cocktail napkin, so you take him back with great (read: embarrassing) alacrity.

Now, sitting in an outdoor café, I’ve already forgotten about winter. I have only the vaguest memory of how, once upon a time last month, we all stay holed up in our tiny apartments, hovering under those anti-depression light bulbs (which are terribly depressing). I’ve forgotten how nobody ever wants to go out in winter, because leaving the house involves layering ourselves in pages 4-36 of the L.L. Bean Winter Catalog. And how everyone seems to be in a foul mood whenever they’re not asleep.

When New York is miserable, it’s miserable in ways that the combined imaginations of Kafka, Sartre, and Dante couldn’t have fathomed. But the City’s intermittent loveliness – Central Park in the fall; the view from a rooftop on a summer night; the Barney’s warehouse sale - is such that even the great poets can only hint at a notion of what it really is.

On days like today, I’ve forgotten my plans to pack it all in and move to the West Coast – deeply intricate plans that hatched on cold winter nights as I sat in front of the stove to keep warm, humming a refrain from La Boheme. My landlord just slipped a lease renewal under the door of my overpriced, rat-infested apartment with inadequate heat and no air conditioning. But right now, it’s neither too hot nor too cold. Why would anyone want to live anywhere else?

You’re setting us up, New York. I think this is a dysfunctional relationship. I know I’m going to have to break it off. But at the moment, I can’t remember why.

- posted by Marguerite @ 5:16 PM

 
Crazy in Alabama

After a weekend visiting relatives in Tuscaloosa, I came back humming “Sweet Home Alabama.” Like myself, the “Lynard Skynard” boys were not from Alabama, but hailed from Jacksonville, Florida, where they attended Robert E. Lee High School (where a certain Leonard Skinnard taught P.E.). I guess “Sweet Home Alabama” has a better ring to it than “Sweet Home Jacksonville.” (F.Y.I.: Other notable Jacksonville musicians include the maudlin composer Frederick Delius; the less-maudlin boys of “Limp Bizkit” fame; and the “Yo-Yo Moms,” my mother’s cello trio).

Something about Alabama does feel like home, even though I’ve never lived there. My dad grew up there, as did all of his folks as far back as anyone can remember (which ain’t so far). The records, or lack thereof, suggest that our ancestors just hatched out of the red clay hills of this state at some point in the 19th century. Like many Americans, the Alabama Kennedys have no actual record of where they came from. Ireland? Scotland? Outer Space? (the latter theory has considerable support). Wherever it was, by the time they got here, amnesia had already set in. History, of course, is a luxury item, reserved for people who aren’t preoccupied with survival. It is the fragile tchotchkie locked in the curio cabinet of human narratives.

Our family history starts in the middle of the story, as my great-granddaddy’s six uncles were about to go “fat for their rats” the “Waw” (of Northern Aggression, of course …). The story is short; they all died. None of them had ever even seen, much less owned, a slave. Of course, the Civil War was pretty much about slavery, but most of the Confederate soldiers didn’t realize it. Plantation owners (who owned over 80% of the slaves) represented only 2% of the Southern population in 1860. (The contemporary equivalent being our war fought for the sake of corporations representing the richest 2% of the population.) The main reason most of the Confederate soldiers signed on, in my opinion, was simply because they liked to fight. The South was (and is) full of cantankerous people who love nothing more than fighting, with the possible exception of drinking. Which brings me back to the family reunion …

The Kennedys still like to fight, although nowadays these energies are channeled into “friendly debates,” which have been known to end in bloodshed. Decade-long feuds have erupted over the conditional future perfect tense of the verb “to lie,” or over the name of ol’ Miz Mac’s second cousin (the one who “was never quite right” after the incident with the opossum in 1937). And for God’s sake, don’t get them started on prepositional phrases. Anything but prepositional phrases.

The problem is, everybody in my family is convinced that he or she is a bona fide expert on all subjects under the sun, a sentiment that’s coupled with the innate (perhaps genetic) inability to admit to being wrong. For instance, let’s say a Kennedy is driving down the street, and doesn’t know where to turn:

Kennedy #1: “Do we turn right to get to the mall?”
Kennedy #2: “No, turn left.”
Kennedy #1: “I knew that! I was just joking.”

My relatives are the kind of folks who will sit for hours and argue over, say, the number of radioactive isotopes in Boron. I’ve gotten sucked into these debates, even though I know nothing about Boron, and much less about Isotopes, except that I get a pair every Christmas but always loose one of them. But I jump into the debate because I know nobody else knows, either, or else it wouldn’t be a topic of conversation. It’s the survival of the most convincing; I learned early on that debate is a linguistic (and sometimes fat-burning) exercise in which the facts have little or no consequence. (Which speaks to the history of Southern politics.)

In New York, I feel like a displaced Southerner, but back in the South, I feel like a displaced Yankee. I don’t have the accent or the impeccably coordinated wardrobes of my Southern cousins, but I know how to make a mint julep and can repair a car body using a luggage strap. If asked who was the greatest football coach of all time, I know that the only correct answer is Bear Bryant.

But I don't smile at strangers anymore, and I know what a "knish" is (well, sort of). I know why the Upper West Side is better than the Upper East Side, and think it's rational to put clothes on a dog. I think the "C.S.A." is someone who does your taxes. So does What does that make me?

A Confederankee?

I left the South because I wanted to live somewhere where “things happen on a grand scale,” to paraphrase Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott (and, incidentally, a high school chum of my grandmama Kennedy’s). I suppose things do happen on a grand scale in New York; if I weren’t so busy picking up terrier poop to pay my exorbitant rent, I’m sure I’d notice.

- posted by Marguerite @ 2:14 PM

 
The Pickle Relish is in the Medicine Cabinet, or, The Mis-Adventures of A.D.D. Girl


I had something terribly important to do today. Really. If only I could remember what it was.

While performing my morning ritual of tearing the house apart in search of my keys, I decided to stop and make a list of all the things I needed to do today – otherwise, I’m sure to forget at least 90% of them. This is what it’s like to live with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. (I’ve had ADD since I was a kid, although I wasn’t diagnosed as an “Adult” until recently.)

To make a list, you need a pen. Unfortunately, my pens have a way of getting misplaced, like my thoughts and keys and pet goldfish (a sad story for another time). The search for a pen takes me to the bathroom cabinet (of course) where, instead of a pen, I find – no joke – a jar of pickle relish. I have no idea how long it’s been there, or what my friends might have thought if they opened up that cabinet, only to be cruelly punished for their voyeuristic curiosity. I also came across a crusty old eyeliner, which isn’t a pen, but heck, it writes. Now all I need is a piece of paper. I rush over to my desk and -

That’s when I see her, flying past my window. A woman with long red hair, wearing a unitard and a cape. It's ADD Girl!! This would-be superhero flies around the country trying to rescue people, but half the time she can’t remember where she’s going, or what she’s supposed to do when she gets there. Her hair blows into her face as she flies, because she keeps loosing her ponytail-tie thingies. Our heroine flies through the air, but that’s not what gets her noticed - what folks notice are her shoes.

“Look, Mom!” Little Suzy exclaims. “That lady - in the sky! She’s wearing two different colored shoes!”

“That’s what happens when you don’t take your Ritalin, Suzy.”

ADD Girl looks down at her accidental trademark: one black pleather boot, one brown. Maybe I should get a shoe tree, she muses, as her supersonic hearing picks up on the frustrated cries of a woman in New York, clutching a blue eyeliner and searching for a scrap of paper. But she can’t remember what she was about to write down! Something about a list. Or was it Liszt? Or maybe Chopin? A Chopin Liszt?

“Arrrrrrrrrrgh!” Comes the voice in New York.

Our hero snaps to. ”Don’t worry! I’ll save the day!”

With great alacrity, ADD Girl soars toward the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But en route, her flighter-sense smells troubleat "The Book Nook" in West New York, New Jersey. Store owner Art McGarygle can’t remember where he stocked those copies of You CAN Become Perfectly Organized! His best customer is on the verge of heading to Barnes & Noble and never coming back. Smells like a job for ADD Girl! She swoops down into the parking lot, thinking how it’s funny they should call the town West New York, when, in fact, it is in East New Jersey.

Names are funny things, our heroine thinks, trying desperately to remember why she is hovering above a strip-mall parking lot in Jersey. Suddenly, she spies Nancy Feinblatt cranking up her minivan - but Nancy doesn’t realize that she left her “dog purse” (containing Kitty, her pet Yorkshire terrier) on the roof of the car!

“This disaster must be averted!!” Our flighty flyer says aloud, to nobody in particular.

As ADD Girl dives toward Nancy’s Aerostar, she notices that The Shoe Rack, the store adjacent to The Book Nook, is having a sale on pleather flip-flops. In a flash, ADD girl remembers - she’s desperately in need of a new pair of pleather flip-flops! It would be a good time-saving measure if she could just stop in and pick some up, on her way to – what was it?

ADD Girl swoops in to save the day (or at least, save 50% on impractical shoes). An hour later she remembers the woman in Manhattan, Art in the bookstore and – jumpin’ jehosaphat - the terrier!

“Crap,” she says to herself, out loud. A man wearing a spaghetti strainer on his head shoots her an odd look. He points at her mismatched boots, taking comfort in the fact that his shoes are both the same color.

ADD Girl sighs deeply as she heads back to the Fortress of Forgetfulness, accidentally leaving her new purple and chartreuse flip-flops on a park bench.

To make a short story longer than necessary, I don’t remember any of the things I was so desperate to put on my to-do list this morning. All of it slipped out of my head when the image of ADD Girl flew into the room. She must have intended to rescue me. Bless her heart, she just got sidetracked somewhere along the way.



- posted by Marguerite @ 12:34 PM

 
For those of you who haven't heard - I'm engaged!

Now, this is the part where you rush to your calendar, expecting to find that it's actually the Latvian Orthodox version of April Fool's day or something. But, as Dave Barry might say - I am not making this up.

And NO, I'm not pregnant. As to answer your next question - Paul? Great guy, really funny, punk rock musician who occasionally does something vague having to do with computers for a living? We've been dating for about six months, but we used to work together, and he's been one of my closest friends for the past two years. We met while working at that nonprofit, where we immediately bonded over our mutual apathy and a fondness for split pea soup.

No dates yet for an actual wedding, but we're thinking April. Because that's the best time for a clothing-optional wedding.
- posted by Marguerite @ 12:06 PM

 
I’ve been writing a lot of fiction, lately. By that I mean - I’ve been updating my resume. This is quite a challenge because I’m still not exactly sure what I did at my last job. I was never given an actual title or job description. All I know is that it had something to do with the Pygmy Squid.

“We’re making all this up as we go along, see?” said my former boss, Mary, making “wax-on, wax-off” circles in the air. This was during my interview, and I was trying to get to the bottom of what the job might actually entail. I’d come prepared for the interview, armed with salient responses for any possible interview question. Except for the one that mattered most:

“So. Marguerite. How do you feel about ambiguity?”

Okay. I’ve heard questions like this before; usually it means someone’s about to propose a ménage a trois.

“Uh…. Ummm…. I feel ambiguously about it?” I took a stab; Mary was not amused. “No, seriously - I thrive on ambiguity,” I said.

Really. The Crying Game is one of my favorite movies, I almost added, before my better judgment staged an intervention.

“The thing is, here at X, we’re on the cutting edge. So much so that we don’t even know what we’re on the cutting edge of. See?” If either of us had been stoned, this conversation would have made a lot more sense. I smiled, nodded and said nothing - my secret receipe for success.

Based on my combined aptitude for silence and ambiguity, I got the job, but even after the first day (week, year) I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. That is, until I found out about the pygmy octopus.

I was in a meeting with Mary and several of my co-workers. We were in the process of drafting a very nebulous proposal for an even more nebulous project when, halfway through the meeting, Mary hit the table so hard I jumped.

“The pygmy octopus!” She exclaimed with such urgency that I looked out the window, half expecting to see giant tentacles rising up out of the Hudson and w –

“Who read the Science section of the Times yesterday?” Mary asked. “Anyone? Anyone?”

“Bueller?” I said, possibly out loud. The remark went unappreciated.

“The pygmy octopus?! (for God’s sake! her expression screamed). “No – wait a minute - it was a pygmy squid.”

"Well. Pygmy squid. Why didn’t you just say so?" I said, possibly out loud.

“They found these squid in England.” “They were sitting in this museum, in a jar, labeled - “Baby Squid.” Mary liked to emphasize nouns. She paused for a moment, to allow this information sink into our impossibly thick skulls.

“They sat on the shelf - in the jar - for a hundred years. But recently, they found out that they weren’t baby squid at all. Turns out - they're pygmy squid. See?” Mary would often end sentences, “see?”

So my co-workers and I sat there, struggling, squinting, like in front of one of those pictures with all the dots, where you’re supposed to see a 3-D dinasour. Or a pygmy squid.

Mary sighed and shook her head, as if she were talking to very small, very idiotic children.

“Which proves," she continued, "that sometimes you have a thing, and you don’t know what that thing is. (short pause, for effect) See?!”

None of us did, but we all pretended to. And then, I realized – I, too, had a thing, but I didn’t know what it was. It was called a job.


- posted by Marguerite @ 2:47 PM

 
I started this blog in February, but I haven't updated it since. Why? I realized that 99.9% of the stuff that I find interesting enough to write about is 99.9% uninteresting to all but 99.9% of humanity. I'm no statistician, but this made the whole blog thing seem downright - masturbatory . Or something. But then I remembered that "masturbatory" is 99.9% of what the Internet's all about.

Another reason for the delay is that I've been terribly busy lately. Turns out unemployment is more time consuming than I thought (what with the serial killer terroring Salem - but is it really Marlena?). Besides - blogging, like so many things, is only truly gratifying when done on the company dime.

On that note - I'm going to have to return to the workforce soon. Does anyone want to pay me to do anything legal? I can type fast, and I have a solid working knowledge of acrobatics.




- posted by Marguerite @ 1:40 PM