the guez

I suppose I should preface all this to say I am not Another Girl in Greenpoint anymore.   I have become Another Girl Priced Out of Greenpoint , and have flown nine miles south, to a little birdhouse with Michael.   Moving in with someone is a very adult thing to do.  It’s a time for plans. And cutlery. Discussions about duvet covers, and the arrangement of books on bookcases.         I’m not sure how it started.   Maybe it started with the prevalence of sidewalk chalk in our neighborhood, used not to ironically point out some over-priced artisanal sale, but to naturally draw out a map to the buried treasure, under the outlines of a hopscotch court, right next to a giant star and a hippo-person.   This was chalk that we tread on every day through the spring and summer.      Or maybe the mosquitoes started it?   One night in early spring, the mosquitoes found the holes in our screens, buzzing and biting us awak...

I wrote this back in February of 2010.  And now, given the circumstances, I think it is appropriate to post here. I discovered Greenpoint by accident on a really good day.  K had just finished cutting my hair in the courtyard of my building to the accompaniment of B’s sound effects and singing. “How does your hair get so BIG? ”  His explosive poof sounds illustrating my giant hair’s refusal to be less giant, even under enthusiastic sheers, made it hard for K to cut straight from the laughing.  We were twenty-three.  Terrified. A year out of college, broke, and clueless.  And only sometimes aware of how happy we were.  It was a Wednesday and none of us had anywhere to be, so we decided to leave my apartment in Williamsburg and go exploring.  The three of us, one with a lighter head, set out for a walk in the new spring warmth, talking a mile a minute, sometimes singing, pointing out the things we found beautiful. We walked in circl...

Text message from Michael to me at 7 am: " Napoleon commands such a strange place in history. Every time I read these references to him, by men not a hundred years removed, he is referred to with a certain reverence. It would seem that even a royalist begrudges him his place, and even his detractors pride themselves that he was, after-all, a Frenchman. " Struggling to think of a response, through a sleep-fog, I finally reply: " You left your charger here. " Morning People...

Sometimes when I'm making dinner, my mind wanders to Archimedes sitting in his bathtub. He was so excited to discover that the volume of his body elevated the water in the tub, that he yelled "Eureka!" and jumped naked into the streets, thrilled to the teeth with his new discovery. Obviously, this man had never made soup in his life. That makes me wonder if Archimedes had a wife, and if he ever posed his mathematical quandaries to her. Maybe she was standing in the kitchen that very afternoon making soup, watching the water level rise according to the volume of the vegetables, wishing her husband would hurry up and get out of the bath so that they could eat before it gets cold.